


Settle Down

by artemisgrace



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: AU, AU with some canon elements, Drama, Eventual Smut, Explicit for future chapters, Humor, M/M, Minor Character Death, Organized Crime, Romance, Russian Mafia, Sexual Content, Viktor is with the mafia, Violence, gotta have both right?, yuuri is still an ice skater
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-12-16
Updated: 2018-08-05
Packaged: 2018-09-08 23:09:09
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 12
Words: 29,421
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8867026
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/artemisgrace/pseuds/artemisgrace
Summary: Viktor Nikiforov was born into this life of violence and crime. As the son of a top-dog in the Russian mafia, there was no other path for him to take, and yet, it doesn't really suit his nature. He seeks an escape, some semblance of a normal life, and in a café on a Wednesday morning, he finds his shred of normality in the form of Yuuri Katsuki.Yuuri Katsuki is a broke college student, struggling to balance grades, finances, and his passion for figure skating. He would consider his life to be rather plain and uninteresting. That is, until a whirlwind of a man by the name of Viktor blows into his life, and he soon finds himself in deeper than he could ever have predicted.





	1. Wednesday Morning

**Author's Note:**

> Yup, despite my two other long-running fics, I found it necessary to get into another one. And, of course, because the canon is relatively light and fluffy, I feel compelled to write a fic brimming with violence and tension, tempered by a little bit of humor.  
> I hope you enjoy it! It's gonna be one wild ride ... in several senses of the word.  
> (ayyyyyyyy)

Smoke curls away from the cigarette held loosely between Viktor’s fingers. It drifts through the air to be framed against the sky above Tokyo, before dissipating into the thin smog that lingers over the city and turns the black sky a shade of brown where it meets the city lights. Only a small strip of sky could be seen in between the towering giants of buildings as they rose to fill the horizon like an endless forest of metal and glass. This sidewalk upon which Viktor stands never sees sunlight, not even in the daytime, for the skyscrapers shadow it with an eternal dusk. The only light here comes from neon signs and the flickering streetlight that Viktor can see on the corner, illuminating the deserted street with a soft yellow glow.

The lights of the city drown out the stars. Viktor hasn’t seen a single star since he got here weeks ago.

This city is foreign to him, strange in every respect. He’s been to cities before of course, but there was something so unique about Tokyo. Perhaps it was how populated it is, bursting with life, with people, thousands and thousands of them rushing past, a never-ending parade of colors, sounds and sights. It’s gorgeous. It’s exciting in way that Viktor hasn’t often experienced; he has seen plenty of excitement, of course, in his line of work, but not the sort that one really enjoys. He supposes that it really depends on one’s definition of excitement, but, seeing as he was born into this life, another man’s idea of excitement has become Viktor’s idea of mundane drudgery. He doesn’t even notice the hard, metallic weight of the gun in its holster beneath his suit jacket, not anymore.

He’s waiting for some hired thugs to load the goods into a waiting truck, playing the part of a supervisor. Not that it takes much supervising; he trusts these men, as much as he can trust anyone. Or at least, he can trust that Yakov will have run a thorough background check on each and every one of them already to clear them for involvement in the job. They couldn’t have gotten so close to a deal like this without being vetted. That is what he can trust.

He can always trust the stick up Yakov’s ass.

But Viktor still has to be there, has to make his presence known. It does good, he’s told, for the lower-downs to remember who the higher-ups are, who it is they’re working for, and how much power their bosses have in their hands. Viktor is his father’s son, the spitting image of an infamous killer and businessman, and him being there will remind all these puppets of who it is that pulls their strings. As well as how quickly word of disobedience could travel straight to the top.

They assumed, incorrectly, that Viktor would report any questionable behavior to his father. In theory, he does report to him, but they talk so rarely, and besides, Viktor isn’t exactly fond of his old man. He knows his place in the organization’s hierarchy, of course, but he doesn’t have to like all that his position entails. 

He gets a thumbs-up from one of the new guys, he thinks his name is Yuri, a tiny, angry, kid with the face of an irate badger, signaling that everything had been loaded and is ready to go. He takes once last drag from the cigarette, holding his breath for a moment before exhaling heavily, expelling the last lungful of smoke in a cloud to hang upon the still night air, and flicks his cigarette away, extinguishing it by grinding it into the pavement with the heel of a $700 shoe. Looking up from the sidewalk with a look of indifference that he makes no attempt to disguise, he strides over to the back of the truck for a cursory inspection of the cargo, running his eyes over a couple dozen innocent-looking crates. Everything seems fine. Not that he really cares if it isn’t; he didn’t arrange this deal and he won’t take the heat for it if something goes wrong. Viktor’s position in this case is more that of a figurehead. 

Sometimes he does do the organizing, but that’s usually for the more … delicate deals. Viktor is charming when he chooses to be, and he is the go-to diplomat, the negotiator for when the situation appears precarious. This truck full of crates in a darkened street on a Tuesday night is nothing like that, not nearly so entertaining. In all honesty, Viktor had totally blown off reading the info packet he’d been given for this job, and he didn’t even know what was in the crates, let alone the details of the dealings. Why bother when he’s only there to stand about looking mysterious and menacing?

It’s a waste of his time, and of his talents. Frankly, it’s insulting.

He signals to Yuri that they can close the truck up and take off, turning away from the bustle of men to flick another cigarette out of the carton, lighting it up in a puff of smoke. Christ, he needs to quit smoking. Get some of that nicotine gum or something. He takes his phone out of his pocket, quickly unlocking it, and shoots off a text to Yakov, letting him know that the deal, or at least Viktor’s role in it, is done. 

Most of the thugs have already disappeared into the darkness of side streets, scuttling back to whatever hiding place they may have, like so many spiders in cheap knock-offs of name brand sneakers. One lingers, and it’s the kid, Yuri, his permanent scowl still plastered to his young face. He couldn’t be more than seventeen, tops, yet his face has lines running over it like highways on a map, some of them scars, and some creases from making the same expression for years at a time. Viktor fought down the impulse to reach out with a gloved hand and press a finger between Yuri’s eyes, to try to smooth out the deep crease there, the telltale sign of brows furrowed far too often. 

But he’s meant to be scary, and scary men don’t cluck over teenaged thugs, smoothing lines from their faces. Scary men are indifferent.

“What are you still hanging around for?” Viktor asked sharply, gruffly, maintaining his image the way he feels compelled to as, if nothing else, an actor proud of his abilities.

The kid shuffles in place a bit and Viktor notices that the furrow of Yuri’s brow seems more stressed, more fearful, than angry.

“I don’t know where I’m supposed to go. Nobody told me. They sent me here, told me where to be for the job, but they didn’t tell me where I’m staying,” the boy muttered, eyes downcast as if the cracks in the sidewalk beneath their feet were spectacularly interesting.

Fuck, count on his people to get a child to steal and smuggle in a foreign land, but not give him a roof to sleep under. He’s gotta have a chat with Yakov about this, and it will be a chat that neither of them will enjoy.

Viktor pulls out his wallet, the sudden movement evidently startling the kid, who blinks rapidly and takes half a step back. Probably thought Viktor was going for his gun. Nonsense, why should he do that? He whips out a few bills, not paying much attention to the actual amount, and thrusts his hand out towards Yuri, offering the money to the kid with a sharp flick of his wrist.

“Take it, kid. Should buy you a place to sleep for a few days at least. I’ll talk to Yakov and see about a more permanent arrangement, since you’re placed here long-term.”

Yuri still seems hesitant, wary, so Viktor shoves the cash at him more forcefully.

“It’s an order, kid, fucking take the money.”

Yuri darts his hand out of a too-long sweatshirt sleeve, quickly snatching the money from Viktor’s fingers, a flicker of fear still visible in his eyes, but tempered by a certain amount of relief. It can’t feel good to not know where you’re sleeping tonight. 

“Thank you, sir,” the boy says formally, inclining his head toward Viktor in a gesture of respect.

Viktor doesn’t need that shit. He doesn’t want the kid thinking that he’s in debt to Viktor and trying to come onto him, to do him favors.

It’s happened before when Viktor has been kind; there are some people who, with the lives they’ve led, cannot accept kindness as it is, but assume there’s a price. Viktor’s got more money than he knows what to do with, the least he could do is buy one of the thugs serving under him a bed for the night. He doesn’t need, or want, sexual favors as thanks.

Better nip that shit in the bud.

“Yeah, yeah, whatever, now fuck off and find yourself somewhere to kip,” Viktor says, making a gesture as if shooing Yuri away down the street, “Text Yakov the address of whatever place you find, let him know where you are so he can find you. Do NOT bother me about it, ok?”

The sharp edge he’s put into his voice gets the point across and Yuri nods quickly before pocketing the cash and taking off down a side street. Viktor may have overdid his menacing mob boss act … the kid practically fucking sprinted away.

Of well, he can be pretty sure that the kid won’t get any funny ideas now.

The sun will be rising soon; it’s too late to bother going to bed. He’s also gonna give Yakov a piece of his mind about these late nights; there have been too many all-nighters lately, and Viktor wants an uninterrupted night of sleep once in a while, dammit. It probably won’t change anything, since Yakov is usually more of a messenger than a mastermind of these gigs, and he probably isn’t really in charge of the schedule, but Viktor’s still gonna try. He’s gotta yell at somebody about it if he wants a chance of anything changing, and he knows that the old man can take whatever Viktor might dish out. He smiles fondly to himself; Yakov is such a hard-ass. 

He would like to like Yakov, but Viktor is too aware of the situation to do so truly. Yakov isn’t a friend. He’s Viktor’s handler. It’s unspoken, and Yakov may even think that Viktor doesn’t know, but Viktor isn’t a fucking idiot. Sometimes he wishes he were an idiot; things might be much simpler and easier if he were. 

So, he supposes, he likes Yakov, but he has no choice but to take everything the man says with a grain of salt.

The street is empty now, all except Viktor, standing in the flickering muddy yellow light of the streetlamp, his cigarette rapidly shrinking in length as he taps the ashes away. There’s nothing of interest to his right, where the street stretches into the darkness of a cluster of sketchy alleyways; he suspects someone might try to jump him if he goes that way, and he’d prefer not to have to shoot anyone tonight. The city gets busier to his left, as the route leads to the downtown sort of area. Viktor doesn’t really know the layout of Tokyo, but he knows where the posh stores and restaurants are, as fine clothing and food are passions of his.

He drops his second cigarette in so many minutes onto the ground and crushes it with his heel, heading off in the busier and less sketchy direction. He’s in dire need of caffeine, and if he doesn’t get some coffee down his throat soon, he’s going to spend the day with an intense headache, and probably be cranky enough to punch someone. He could definitely get away with it, but still, he ought to try avoiding punching anybody outside of boxing in a gym. Manners dictated it, after all.

He wanders for a while, scouting for a decent café, taking in the sights of Tokyo in the wee hours of the early morning. Even this early, there were still people everywhere, bustling about, wrapped up against the chill of the morning. Eventually, the sun would get high enough to rise above the tall buildings blocking its rays, but for now, the light is a sort of milky grey, making everything look almost ghostly in the partial gloom.   
He catches sight of a small café that is, surprisingly enough, open this early on weekdays. It’s a pretty cutesy place, and apparently, the chosen theme is floral décor, but it smells so temptingly of coffee and vanilla, and Viktor is drawn to it like a fly to honey.

A little bell hanging on the doorknob jingled as he opened the door, a wave of coffee-scented warm air washing over him as he enters the building, the sound of the whirring of an espresso machine and the clinking of cups riding the warm breeze to ring in Viktor’s ears. He smiles softly to himself, walking inside; this is such a welcome change from how he spent the night, in the company of gang underlings in a dirty back street.

This café certainly smelled much nicer.

He walks up to the counter and orders coffee, chatting amicably with the nice young lady minding the counter. He’s not actually quite sure what he has ordered; it was the special, as advertised on a hand drawn sign at the counter, but he can’t read Japanese well enough to figure out what the special actually is. It’ll probably be nice though, if they were confident enough in it to make it today’s special. 

Taking a sip, Viktor finds it to be, first of all, very, very hot, and second, really quite tasty. That’s a thing he’s really liking about Japan so far, the food is delicious. Making a pleased “mmm” sound, Viktor takes another sip, this one much more carefully now that he knows how hot it is. It’s like drinking birthday cake, it’s sweet and creamy and marvelous. He takes his drink over to a table by the window where he’ll be able to people-watch, relaxing back into the chair and reveling in the comforting warmth of the travel cup of coffee in his hands. 

When he’d initially walked in, Viktor had thought the shop to be empty apart from himself and the staff; he hadn’t seen anyone else, but he’d thought it unsurprising considering the ungodly early hour of the morning. Sitting at his table, however, he could now see that there was one other customer in the café, sitting at a table out of sight of the front door. 

It’s a man, probably somewhat younger than Viktor himself, going by the man’s looks. He seems to be Japanese, a local, not a foreigner like Viktor. He has a cute face, a little on the round side, but the look is really working for him, Victor thinks, as he watches the man push a pair of blue-framed glasses up higher on his nose. The man’s reading a book with cup in hand, but again, Viktor can’t read well enough to tell the book’s title. 

He really needs to take a class or something if he’s gonna be in Japan long-term. He can carry on a conversation well enough, but he’s mostly illiterate, which is probably going to cause problems at some point. For example, if he wishes to actually know what he is ordering off a menu. Usually, he finds out what he’s ordered only when the meal arrives at his table. So far he hasn’t been disappointed, but his luck is likely to run out at some point, and he’ll find himself ordering something ghastly.

Viktor continues to casually observe this stranger across the café, out of genuine interest as much as boredom; for some reason, this man had caught his sleep-deprived eye enough to keep him from wandering off back to his hotel for a nap. The stranger has a backpack by his feet; he must be on his way somewhere and stopped off for a hot drink. Viktor wonders where this man could be going to be out so early in the morning, but then again, he thinks, the same could be asked of himself.

And are those ice skates? Viktor raises his cup to his lips, to take a sip, but also to provide some semblance of a disguise as he tries to sneak a better look of the man’s belongings. Yes, they’re ice skates; interesting, the guy must be a skater. Not the most popular of sports, not something you regularly see about, but that only makes the man more intriguing.

Viktor is aware that he’s behaving like a total creep, but the man across the café hasn’t spotted it yet, so it doesn’t count. It’s not creepy unless he’s caught doing it. And the man really is quite exceptionally cute …  
The man raises his cup to his lips, for the first time since Viktor’s been watching, and takes a sip. He apparently hadn’t tested the temperature beforehand, because his face scrunches up instantly, and he sticks the tip of his tongue out of his mouth as if to aid in cooling it. 

Fuck, that was unnecessarily adorable, how dare he be this cute in public?

Viktor can’t help but chuckle behind his cup at the scene, realizing too late that he’s given himself away. The man looks up at him, quickly pulling his tongue back into his mouth, looking a bit embarrassed as a pretty pink blush blooms in his cheeks and spreads down his neck. Viktor doesn’t break eye-contact, although he knows that he ought to if he wishes to look like a regular person and not some creepy pervert spying on a stranger. 

But the strange man doesn’t look away either. How interesting …

Viktor rises from his seat, plucking his coffee up from the table, and strides over to the man’s table. 

“May I sit?” he asks in slightly halted Japanese.

“Um … sure …” the man replies, so Viktor sits across from him, smiling amicably, so as not to frighten off this pretty young thing. 

“I’m Viktor,” he introduces himself, managing to sound more fluent this time, though that is largely due to the fact that it’s the first sentence he’d ever learned in Japanese, as well as the most used, “And you are?”

The blush in the man’s cheeks hasn’t faded, and he sits rather awkwardly in his chair, stiffly, with his back far too straight and rigid, but Viktor finds it rather endearing.

He answers, his voice slightly muffled by embarrassment, “My name is Yuuri.”

Viktor smiles wider, reaching over to take the man’s hand and shake it a bit more enthusiastically than is strictly appropriate, drawing a gasp and a confused expression from his new acquaintance.

“It’s an absolute pleasure to meet you, Yuuri.”


	2. Business Cards and Text Messages

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> We hear Yuuri's side of the events of the morning, as well as his impressions of Viktor. When Viktor departs, he leaves Yuuri with a somewhat mysterious card, one containing a phone number.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter 2 is here!   
> If you wanna keep up with me outside AO3, I have an Instagram and a Twitter, both under the username @artemisgraceart.   
> Thank you so much, everyone, for your support and your kind messages, it really means a lot! I am simply thrilled at the response I've gotten already, after only one chapter. Thank you so very much!

Yuuri pulls his coat collar higher up around his face, trying to keep the stinging chill of the early autumn morning from settling into his cheeks. There’s a light breeze, and though it may not be strong, it is agonizing where it comes into contact with Yuuri’s bare skin, driving all warmth from his bones. He’s really wishing that he could find his gloves, he thinks, as he adjusts his grip on the pair of ice skates in his hand, fighting to maintain hold of them despite the growing numbness in his fingers.

He’s just been to the rink to practice, so he had started out cold and only grew colder when he stepped outside. The manager lets him practice before opening, or after closing if he promises to lock everything up, for which Yuuri is eternally grateful. The way things are right now, financially, he can’t afford the annual pass, and to buy a day pass every time would cost even more. 

Money has been tight since his family’s onsen closed during the last recession a couple years ago. Theirs hadn’t been the only business in his hometown to close at that time; Yuuri knew of a couple other onsens that went out of business, as well as a couple of restaurants. 

Yuuri had only just begun attending university in Tokyo when the family business failed, and he knew how much of a strain it was on his family’s resources. He’d offered to leave school and work to try to get the onsen open again, so his parents wouldn’t have to worry about money, but they had refused, insisting that their son gets a higher education. They had argued that, with a university diploma, he could get a higher paying job, and then he could worry about taking care of them. Yuuri hadn’t been in a position to refuse, but there still was very little cash to spare.

So Yuuri lives here in Tokyo, in a tiny apartment, vaguely reminiscent of a shoe box, and he goes to school as a part time student, since he has to work, currently in the book shop down the street, if he wants to be able to afford things like utilities and food. 

But he’s got a little to spare this morning, having been particularly frugal over the past week, and by god, he is going to get himself a cup of hot cocoa, lest he freeze to death out here on the sidewalk. He spots a tiny café, one that he’s been in once or twice before, and makes a beeline for it, hurrying as quickly as his frozen legs can carry him, his backpack of books and equipment bouncing on his back, imparting upon him no small amount of lower back pain, and causing his jacket to ride up at the back most uncomfortably. 

The bell jingles as he opens the door, and as he enters, his glasses fog up almost instantaneously, obscuring his vision as if looking at the world through a curtain of semi-translucent fabric. He takes them off to wipe them on the hem of his soft, if slightly ratty, shirt, before replacing them on the bridge of his nose, shuffling on stiff legs up to the counter.

He already knows what he wants, so he orders quickly. As the cashier turns away to put his order in, he fears that he came off as a bit cold and distant. The cashier seems to be really quite nice, and he doesn’t mean to seem that way. His coldness is the only literal kind, he’s fucking freezing and he is really in a hurry to have his hot cocoa.

He knows that this place is really more of a coffee shop than a hot cocoa shop, and he looks a bit odd ordering chocolate, which they mostly have on the menu for children, should they come in with their parents. But he can’t stand coffee; it’s too bitter, no matter how much sugar and cream is added. Coffee isn’t worth the expense, not to Yuuri, but cocoa is. Cocoa is brilliant.

When his drink is ready, he snatches it up, enjoying the warmth of it in his chilled hand. He heads over to a table, choosing one toward the back of the shop, somewhat more private than the tables closer to the door. Not to mention that, sitting way back here, the rush of cold air that comes in when the door is opened will not reach him. He sets his skates down carefully and shrugs off his backpack, setting both by his feet before sliding into the seat, wriggling a bit to get comfortable in the hard wooden chair. There’s a cushion, but it’s not very thick.

He pulls out a book, one that he, to his dismay, will have to write an essay on sometime before the coming Monday. He hasn’t started it yet, and he’s beginning to feel the academic pressure increase, a semi-permanent feeling of butterflies taking up residence in his stomach, where they will remain until he’s finished his homework. If only it weren’t so mind-numbingly dull, he might be more inclined to do these things in a timely manner. Holding the book with one hand, Yuuri takes the mug of cocoa in his other hand, letting the heat of it seep into his skin, warming to the bone. 

He remains there, undisturbed, for a good half hour before the bell of the front door jingles again, signaling the entrance of another customer. The man who walks in is a foreigner, some brand of European, wearing a very nice suit and a shiny pair of shoes that Yuuri is sure he could never hope to afford in his lifetime. Some sort of business executive, Yuuri supposes, although this isn’t exactly the sort of place that CEO’s and the like tend to frequent. Then again, there’s no rule against a CEO going into a kitschy coffee shop though, so why not? The rich can get away with being as eccentric as they like.

The man looks too excited to be here. The shop is kinda cute, Yuuri concedes, but it isn’t the Ritz or anything, nothing that would justify that level of enthusiasm. Maybe it’s a cultural thing, and in whatever country the man comes from, this place is exotic and exciting. 

As the man orders, Yuuri hears his accent, Russian, maybe? Whatever it is, it’s thick, and a bit difficult to understand at first. Yuuri also gets the distinct impression, as he watches the man look at the menu up on the wall, that the man cannot read. It’s not a picture menu like many places in Tokyo have for the benefit of tourists, and the man flicks his eyes over the words, but Yuuri sees no comprehension in them. His suspicions are confirmed as the man gives up, ordering “the special, please,” and grinning unnecessarily widely at the cashier, who blushes and smiles back. Yuuri supposes that the man, incredibly odd as he may be, does have a certain charm. He smiles a bit to himself when, after it’s ready, the strange man picks up his drink and takes an exaggeratedly cautious sip. The man is like a cartoon person. 

Evidently pleased with his mystery drink, the man, walks to a table and takes a seat. It’s in direct view of Yuuri’s table, which means that Yuuri is in direct view of the stranger, and he ducks his head, directing his attention back to his book, and pretending that he hasn’t been watching the man this whole time with an air of amusement. 

Yuuri takes a sip of his cocoa, expecting it to have cooled a bit by now, but he discovers it to still be REALLY FUCKING HOT and he splutters, making a face and sticking his tongue out on reflex, trying to cool the burn. It is only then that Yuuri realizes he’s being watched, that his little spectacle was observed. 

Yuuri looks up at the sound of a deep chuckle, feeling heat spread over his face as he makes direct eye contact with the stranger. It was the stranger who did the chuckling, and the man hasn’t looked away, unabashedly looking directly into Yuuri’s wide open, startled eyes. Yuuri realizes suddenly that he too now is staring, and he moves to look away, to break this awkward eye contact, only for the stranger to suddenly stand up from his table, pushing the chair back in before stepping away, heading in Yuuri’s direction. The man moves directly towards him, smiling amicably, a rather silly little grin.

He is immediately struck by the man’s height, and it isn’t just that the man is standing while Yuuri is seated, no, the man must be a good head taller than Yuuri, and Yuuri suddenly feels very small. The man is actually a bit intimidating looking close up, with his perfectly styled silver hair and his obviously very expensive suit, but then, he hasn’t actually done anything to justify Yuuri’s nerves. It’s an odd sense that there’s something more to him than meets Yuuri’s eyes. He’s a bit confused about what’s happening, but Yuuri must admit that he’s also curious about this stranger.

The man speaks, asking Yuuri, “May I sit?” in his heavily accented Japanese, gesturing to the chair opposite Yuuri with a very open expression upon his face, one that curiously reminds Yuuri of his dog when he was but a little puppy. 

This strange CEO-puppy man … Yuuri just can’t pin him down.

“Um … sure …” Yuuri answers uncertainly. It is not often that strange people come up and ask to sit with him, not average people, and particularly not rich foreigners.

The man sits with an elegant, fluid movement, an action seemingly contradictory to his silly air, taking position facing Yuuri. How could he be so cartoonish and at once have the grace of a ballet dancer of the upmost skill? Bizzare, this man …

“I’m Viktor,” the man offers, unprompted, “And you are?”

Yuuri is slightly hesitant to give his name to a stranger, but he does anyway, answering the man, “My name is Yuuri.”

The man, Viktor’s, amicable smile grows into a wide grin, that too-enthusiastic look creeping back onto his face, and Yuuri only has a moment’s warning before Viktor reaches a slim, pale hand across the table to seize Yuuri’s own hand, shaking it vigorously. Yuuri is suddenly all too aware of his own hand’s plumpness, and the worry that his hand might be clammy and unpleasant strikes him instantly. He gasps, getting only more and more lost as the interaction with Viktor continues.

“It’s an absolute pleasure to meet you, Yuuri.”

Yuuri sincerely doubts that meeting him could realistically be described as an “absolute pleasure,” but this Viktor seems to be genuine. Viktor releases his hand and Yuuri draws it back close to himself, the feel of Viktor’s hand clutching his still lingering. 

Yuuri’s morning is just getting weirder and weirder, and he wonders why on earth this man decided to come sit across from him. Viktor seems to be everything that Yuuri isn’t. He’s obviously quite wealthy, tall, slim by nature, with shiny, expertly styled silver hair, and so elegantly dressed in a suit and overcoat. Yuuri is all too aware that he’s poor, wearing a ratty shirt with a second-hand jacket and jeans so old they’ve faded to a much lighter blue than they began with. He knows that his hair is messy; he’s never found a style that really worked for him, so he kinds just lets it do whatever it feels like, resulting in often looking like he just woke up and hasn’t brushed out his bed-head. And he’s short, and tends toward roundness; it takes constant upkeep to avoid his natural shape, and he simply hasn’t the time to exercise that much, with school and work. 

He’s nothing like this man, they’ve probably got nothing at all in common, so why is Viktor now sitting across from him, holding his drink and smiling at Yuuri with his set of perfect white teeth?

Yuuri would like to ask why, but he’s not sure how he could phrase the question without sounding rude or unfriendly. His friend at university, Phichit, is always telling him to be more amicable, to make more friends, so Yuuri supposes he’ll try not to put Viktor off. If this attempt at friendliness goes badly, he can blame it on Phichit and demand the consolation prize of another cocoa. 

Yuuri has evidently been silent for too long, because Yuuri’s new acquaintance speaks up, his voice as friendly as his smile. If Yuuri didn’t know better, he’d think that Viktor is being absolutely sincere, but Yuuri doesn’t get smiles directed at him, not smiles like that. It’s the smile that pretty people get. 

“You know, you’re the second Yuuri that I’ve met recently,” Viktor says conversationally.

“Oh?” Yuuri answers lamely. He’s trying to think of a conversation topic, but as Viktor speaks and Yuuri watches his lips move, Yuuri can’t think of a damn thing.

“Yes, but the other Yuri is very small and angry. You just look a bit confused.”

Wow. Viktor evidently wasn’t gonna skirt around that. Nope, he went straight in for it. Yuuri is confused as hell, and it shows.

“Sorry,” Yuuri apologizes, looking guiltily down to his hands where the rest on the edge of the table, “I was just wondering … why you’ve come over to speak to me.”

Now Viktor looks confused, tilting his head to the side and quirking an eyebrow. Is it a language barrier thing, or is Viktor genuinely unaware of the oddness of the situation he’s created?

“I mean,” Yuuri continues, “you must surely have a reason. Most people wouldn’t choose to sit with a stranger when the shop is mostly empty. There are plenty of other seats to sit in.”

“Well, you looked interesting,” Viktor replies in halted Japanese, stumbling a bit in his speech, but recovering quite well. He’s a foreigner, but he must have some previous experience.

In what way does he look interesting, Yuuri wonders? If Yuuri were exceptional, he would sooner describe himself as exceptionally mundane. Boring, really. 

As if Viktor can hear Yuuri’s internal monologue, he replies to the question as it remained unspoken, “You have a cute face.”

Yuuri splutters, making an embarrassing assortment of syllables without actually managing to find any words to say, feeling his face grow hot, turning an absurd shade of red. His sister always told him that he looked like a tomato when he was embarrassed, and Yuuri cannot deny the truth in her statement. He can feel the burn, and knows his face must be quite the sight. He’s scrambling for something to say, but his brain is turning up nothing but a series of question and exclamation marks. Not helpful.

Mercifully, Yuuri is saved from having to come up with something by a small, high-pitched pinging sound, a text notification. It’s not Yuuri’s tone, and it is proven to be Viktor’s as the man draws back from where he’s been leaning, elbows resting on the table. He reaches into his pocket and pulls out his phone, which Yuuri recognizes to be very top-of-the-line, unlike Yuuri’s own little flip phone, and quickly unlocks it, checking his texts.

The moment the ping of the text notification rings through the air between them, Viktor seems to retreat into himself, the overenthusiastic gleam in his eyes fading quite suddenly, and once he unlocks the screen and reads the text, Yuuri notices his face falling, the smile disappearing from his face as well as from his eyes. It’s such a sudden and unexpected shift that Yuuri feels rather like he’s experiencing some sort of whiplash from the instantaneous change in Viktor’s manner. The expression on his face bothers Yuuri; Viktor seems genuinely distressed, although he may be maintaining subtlety.

Viktor flicks the button on his phone to lock it again and replaces it in his pocket, the smile returning to his face just as the phone leaves Yuuri’s sight. There’s a slight fragility to it though, a delicate smile, as though it had been effortless before, but it now required a reservoir of strength to keep up. Yuuri worries that Viktor may have gotten some very bad news just now; he hopes no one has died or anything …

Viktor startles him once again by reaching back across the table to clasp Yuuri’s hand in his own, his skin cooler to the touch than Yuuri would have predicted, given Viktor’s been holding that hot cup of coffee. And it’s awfully smooth; Yuuri has to resist the temptation to brush his fingers across the alabaster skin. Doing so would be really weird, possibly too weird even for this incredibly weird Russian man. 

“I must leave,” Viktor says, his voice still fond, but more serious than previous, “I have work I must attend to.”

“Oh, alright,” Yuuri breathes out, admittedly a bit disappointed that Viktor is leaving. The odds of them meeting again are not good at all, and although this experience has been a bit uncomfortable at certain junctures, it is by far the most interesting thing that has happened to Yuuri in a long time.

He didn’t realize how much he had been craving a break from monotony, and now that he’s had this taste, he isn’t at all eager for the monotony to return. 

Viktor’s hand releases his own, and it is only then that he realizes that Viktor has pushed a small card into his hand, something like a business card, but when Yuuri brings it up to eye-level to read it, there is no business name, only Viktor’s name and a phone number. Odd, to print up a business card, but refrain from including the business’ name …

“You will send a text, yes?” Viktor asks excitedly, “We can be texting friends?”

“O-okay,” Yuuri responds, almost wondering if Viktor had read his mind just now, “that would be nice.”

“Good!” Viktor grins victoriously and reaches out to pat Yuuri quickly on the shoulder, before turning away just as quickly and heading for the door, the long coat over his suit jacket swirling with the movement.   
“Bye!” Viktor exclaims, waving at Yuuri over his shoulder as he pushes the door of the café open and exits, as dramatic as ever.

“Bye …” Yuuri’s voice tapers off, and he lowers the hand he’d half-raised in a wave of his own, realizing that Viktor is already gone, and will not hear his farewell. 

He looks back down to the card in his hand, reading the name printed upon it in silver letters, outlined in black.

“Viktor Nikiforov, huh …”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The two sides of Viktor ... how will he reconcile the two? And should Yuuri work up the courage to text, how will he and Viktor possibly proceed?


	3. Threats

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Viktor has a less than cordial encounter with his father figure/handler, Yakov, in which he says some things that he may not be able to take back.   
> He's determined to see Yuuri again, no matter how unlikely the possibility of a long-term relationship, platonic or otherwise, is in Viktor's sort of lifestyle.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A shorter than typical chapter this time because it's more of the first part of a very long chapter. The second half will be Yuuri's side of things, how he spends the rest of his day.

He’s gonna fucking kill Yakov. Not literally, of course, or Viktor would likely find himself in some body of water tied to a concrete block, but figuratively … he’ll kill the man, Viktor thinks as he strides away from the café where his new friend Yuuri is left all by himself, absolutely fuming over the untimely interruption of Yakov’s text, the tone of which Viktor could only describe as pissy. Apparently, Viktor’s instructions to the kid,Yuri, in some way affected Yakov’s plans. As if Viktor could help that when he wasn’t being apprised of any plans, and yes, he was more than a little salty about being left about as well as being ordered about. What did Yakov think he was, psychic? Seriously, Yakov had the absolute worst timing, texting right as things were getting good, right as Viktor was FINALLY having a pleasant conversation with a normal person, one who he really liked, who he could really see himself connecting with. Can’t he have even an hour or two to himself?

He knows the answer to that, and the answer, as it always has been, is no. No. He will never have time of his own, not even an hour or two; he is a puppet of the organization twenty-four hours a day, every day, from the date of his birth until the date of his death. Predestined, it was, the path chosen for him generations before Viktor himself came to be. It’s a family business, after all, whether he likes it or not.

But being family doesn’t mean that they won’t kill him if he becomes a problem. Or if he tries to leave. Viktor tries not to think about it, tries not to fully acknowledge just how trapped he is, lest the notion drive him batshit insane. 

It’s like how, if one were sitting in a room, one wouldn’t care whether the door was open or closed; it wouldn’t really matter, that is, until the moment that one discovers that the door is locked. Being confined is not a problem until one realizes one is confined. In his youth, Viktor had still been unaware of his confinement, of his metaphorical prisoner status, and he hadn’t had a care in the world, but as he grew, he gradually became aware of the lock on the door, and the room in which he lived only became more and more inhospitable, the walls much taller and the room much smaller than he’d realized. 

Oh, but that man Yuuri was so cute, even in his blushing confusion, no, especially in his blushing confusion, and Viktor would have loved to stay longer, screw the unspoken policy of no relationships, platonic or romantic, outside of the organization. He’d had such a good time. But they’d barely talked, how could Viktor be sure that Yuuri would even text the number he had given him? If he receives no text, he’ll come back to the café tomorrow, Viktor decides, and he’ll hope that Yuuri is there.

He’s not letting this one nice thing be taken from him by the shitty circumstances of his heritage, not like all the others in the past, not this one. He’s a grown-ass man, approaching thirty years old, and he has never before felt the thrill of a casual conversation with a pretty stranger in a tacky café. Gunfights are his stock in trade, as are the drug deals, arms smuggling, truly the A to Z of organized crime, but they are no thrill to him. They are simply mundane and they bore Viktor to tears. 

But Yuuri had made his heart flutter most agreeably, butterflies rising in Viktor’s chest, a sensation that no ringing of a bullet off the side of his car ever could. Yuuri’s nervous smile was so sweet; Viktor’s chest tightened at the sight in a way that made him grin like an absolute fool. God knows he could use a little foolishness in his life; years upon years of seriousness have left him starved for lightness, for free-spiritedness, for something calm and pleasant. For something good, really good, in a modest, normal way. For something like Yuuri.

But for now, there’s an irate Yakov waiting for him at the street corner up ahead of him, the old man tapping his foot with a heavy, decisive step, one clearly meant to communicate his anger, and to intimidate Viktor. Tough shit, Viktor is not putting up with that, not this morning; he was up all night doing a job, and when he tries to take one damn coffee break, Yakov’s there again, pinging his phone with yet more demands, unfounded accusations, and scolding. 

He can tell that Yakov is planning to verbally thrash him the second he gets close enough, he can see the man breathing in to ready himself for a stern shout, so Viktor gets there first, launching right into a tirade of his own before Yakov can even get started. A preemptive strike.

“What in the ever-living fuck did you think you were doing, Yakov?” he’s raised his voice, but he’s keeping it below a shout, knowing that it’ll keep the high ground in a way that genuine screaming won’t, “I’m baby-sitting a crowd of Mafioso wannabe’s all damn night for you, and I can’t even get a cup of coffee without being harassed? Do you never consider that I might be busy? That I might have better things to do with my time than run around doing your work for you?”

Yakov’s inhalation, which he had clearly intended to make into a shout, emerged as more of a long wheeze, reminiscent of the deflation of a party balloon, and sounding incredibly satisfying to Viktor’s ears. He’s accustomed to dealing verbal bitch-slaps, some of them even to Yakov, because he knows Yakov can take it, and Yakov is accustomed to taking lip from Viktor, but this outburst has clearly surprised him. His face is going really quite red.

“And what,” Viktor continues, “pray tell, is the reason for your morning assault on my text message inbox? That I gave money, my own money, I should mention, to a young member of our organization, who YOU had failed to house? And that bothers you? Sounds like a personal problem there, Yakov.”

Yakov furrows his brow and takes advantage of Viktor pausing for breath to retort, “It was a test of resourcefulness, Viktor, the kid is new and shows promise, so I thought I’d see what he’d manage to come up with in a pinch.”

Viktor rolls his eyes, turning away in exasperation, “Oh, Christ, Yakov, that’s not the way to inspire loyalty, leaving your own people out to dry!” he rounds back on Yakov again, “And what business have you recruiting a fucking infant like him? He’s a child, Yakov, a baby. I’d have thought even you would be able to scrape together enough of a conscience to figure out that that’s wrong.”

“He came to us,” Yakov snapped, “parents dead and an ailing grandfather, he came to us for work, and we gave it to him. He asked for this!”

“No, Yakov,” Viktor corrects him, “he came to you out of desperation and you are taking cruel advantage of that, don’t try to pretend that it’s a charity case, do NOT try that one on me, I’ve been in this way too long to believe crap like that. Spare me your sales, pitch, Mr. Manager, I’ve already seen the stock room.”

“But -” Yakov begins, but Viktor cuts him off. Perhaps his lack of sleep, and lack of pretty boys to converse with, is having an impact on his half of the conversation. Normally he’d have more tact with Yakov, even though he may mouth off from time to time, but he just wasn’t in the mood for tiptoeing his way through this interaction, not this morning. 

“The least you can do is not test him with homelessness and hunger. I suspect he had enough of that back in Russia, long before you shipped him here,” Viktor turns, fully intent on striding off, before turning back with a last thing to add, “Oh and Yakov?”

Yakov looks at him expectantly, clearly unhappy with the proceedings, but seeming to see at least some truth in Viktor’s ranting. 

“I’ll tell you a little something, as a friend, just a little tip. You better be damn nice to that kid from here on out if you want his loyalty, ‘cause right now, he’s got more loyalty to me personally than to the entire organization, no matter what pitiful compensation you may have offered him so far.” 

He knows how much his words mean, how much lies beyond the face value. The internal political situation surrounding Viktor is tense to say the least. He has more power than many members would like, despite his undisguised dislike of the mafia life, both as his father’s son and as a man of very specific, and useful, skills. Were he to gain the loyalty of enough men, loyalty to himself alone and not to the organization, he could become a genuine threat to the hierarchy. Were he to decide that he liked the idea, he could seize control of a great deal of assets. It’s sheer luck for the higher-ups that his personality leaves him uninclined. 

His “tip” to Yakov was, in fact, a threat in itself. One that Yakov will take seriously, if the look in the old man’s eyes indicated anything.

That should keep him off Viktor’s back for a day or so, though he may come to regret this later, in which time he could take the nap he so desperately needed, eat something, and see about finding Yuuri again. Perhaps, he thinks, as he walks away from the fuming Yakov, when he wakes, it may be to a text from that adorable man. That would be lovely. 

His anger fading in the midst of imagined scenes between Yuuri and himself, Viktor takes off in the direction of his apartment building, an elegant and costly high-rise in the middle of a busy and vibrant city. Passing the doorman and taking the elevator up to his floor, Viktor finds himself drooping, his exhaustion from a long work day catching up with him in a big way, his head still full of hot cups of coffee, kitschy floral décor, and a pretty smile on the round face of a new acquaintance. 

Stumbling up to his door and fumbling the key into the lock, Viktor barely makes it to the pristine white couch in the center of his cold, white, minimalist apartment, not even bothering to remove his coat or his shoes, before he passes right out, flopping onto the couch cushions with a wheeze as consciousness leaves him, and he drifts away, into dreams of a beautiful boy called Yuuri, and a normal life, in which the boy could be his.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Will sweet Yuuri make Viktor's day and text him? Or will Viktor have to pursue him, returning to the coffee shop until Yuuri makes an appearance?


	4. A Friend in Need is a Friend Indeed

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Yuuri consults his friend Phichit about how to proceed with the enigma that is Viktor Nikiforov.  
> Viktor Nikiforov, in the meanwhile, is an idiot.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So sorry, everyone, for the long break in between chapters. I'm not spectacularly good at keeping to a schedule, particularly not during the quarter at university. And, unfortunately, I caught a cold that turned into bronchitis, then into pneumonia, which slowed things down quite a lot. 
> 
> The quarter is over soon though, and I'll have a little break in which to write and draw again. Got a couple commissions waiting in the wings as we speak.

Yuuri, for his own part, spends the rest of the day in a state of mild panic.

It isn’t every day that a handsome, if incredibly strange, man approaches him with an invitation for future meetings. It just … never happens. He’s never even entertained the idea. We’ll that’s not strictly true, he has his fantasies just like anyone, but he certainly never thought that it could happen in real life. And now he has no fucking idea what to do with the business card he clutches in a white-knuckled hand, even now that he’s made his way back from school to the apartment that he shares with his good friend, Phichit. 

It’s tiny as hell, but the place is still too expensive for one person to afford, so he puts up with the incredibly outgoing Instagram enthusiast that is Phichit. Don’t get him wrong, he likes Phichit, he really does, but he can’t help but think that himself and Phichit are polar opposites, with little in common besides skating and school. But, despite Yuuri’s initial doubts, skating and school are enough to hold a friendship together, as has become apparent with time. Phichit keeps Yuuri from becoming an unutterably boring hermit, and Yuuri keeps Phichit from doing anything too impulsive. Or, as Phichit would put it, from having too much fun.

In all honesty, Yuuri is infinitely grateful to Phichit. Without him, Yuuri would probably be hopelessly isolated. And he’d have absolutely no fun at all.

Yuuri sinks down onto his own bed, which he hadn’t bothered to make this morning, so it resembles more of a tangled blanket nest than a bed. He turns the card over in his hand, noting the grain of the paper, unexpectedly fine for a business card, smooth to the touch and probably very expensive, and the silver and black letters spelling his new acquaintance’s name: Viktor Nikiforov. Definitely Russian then. What could he be doing in Tokyo? He had said that he had business to attend to, so he was here, most likely, for a business trip. Though, after their interaction, Yuuri had largely abandoned the “young, handsome CEO” theory. The Viktor he’d met didn’t seem nearly professional enough for that. CEO’s son maybe? As the heir, given a position within the company, yet still in the process of getting his ya-ya’s out? Stumbling almost drunkenly, but happily, through life, until the responsibility sobers him up? 

But, even if that were the case, why would he give Yuuri his number? If he didn’t know better, he might suspect that this was what Phichit would refer to as a “booty call,” but Yuuri does know better, and he is fully aware that he isn’t the type anyone would usually go to for a booty call. Fuck, he’ll have to ask Phichit; this is too far into uncharted territory for Yuuri to find his own way around. Bless Phichit and his excess of life experiences; who else could be a better guide?

Speak of the devil! It is at that very moment that Yuuri hears the rattling of Phichit’s key in the front door lock, which, although it functions well enough to get the door open, has never fit quite right. From the other side of the door, he hears Phichit’s muffled cursing.

“Motherfucking piece of shit, why are you like this?” he grumbles accusingly at the uncooperative lock, violently rattling the key as if he could physically intimidate the mechanism into submission. He seems to take the lock’s lack of cooperation as a personal insult.

“Hold on Phichit,” Yuuri calls out, standing up from his bed and heading for the door, less concerned with being helpful than with preventing damage to their door, for which they would have to pay their landlord dearly, “I’ll open it for you!”

The sound of Phichit’s struggle with the door grows in volume as Yuuri approaches, and, most unfortunately for Yuuri, it is just as he reaches the door that Phichit wins his battle, the door banging open with a fair amount of force and meeting Yuuri’s well-meaning face head-on. The sound of the impact is followed closely by a squeal of pain as Yuuri clutches his nose, eyes watering and head ringing.

“Oh shit, I’m so sorry!” Phichit exclaims, keys and backpack falling to the floor as he flails his arms uncertainly, as if he wishes to pat Yuuri comfortingly, but is wary of the possibility of such an action being entirely unwelcome, particularly considering that he himself had inflicted the injury.

“Ugh, it’s fine, just close the door,” Yuuri mumbles, the hand covering his nose feeling about gently as he reassures himself that it is merely incredibly painful, but that nothing is actually broken.

Phichit hurries to obey, kicking his fallen backpack out of the path of the door before closing it, moving with exaggerated caution so as not to repeat the recent incident. 

“Jesus Christ, Phichit,” Yuuri curses in an admonition, “you need to calm the fuck down when it comes to that door. You nearly broke my face, which is bad enough, but if you break the door, we don’t get our security deposit back, and we’ll get fined.”

“We need to fix that fucking door, that’s what,” Phichit growls, though he balks slightly at Yuuri’s ensuing glare. “Alright, I’ll be more careful, but we do need it fixed.”

“Well, when you have the extra cash to get it fixed, do let me know,” Yuuri dryly reminds Phichit of their financial situation, turning back to his bed and climbing back into his messy, but comforting, blanket nest.  
“Fair point,” Phichit responds, voice equally unamused, as he kicks off his shoes and sets about putting his school things away, hopefully in locations where he’ll be able to find them again. 

The pain in his nose fading, Yuuri remembers rather suddenly what he’d been wanting to ask Phichit about, before his train of thought had been so rudely derailed by a door in the face.

“Hey, Phichit?” he asks haltingly, his nervousness evident in his voice despite his efforts to be cool and collected. Phichit’s probably going to laugh when Yuuri tells him what’s happened today, and Yuuri won’t really be able to fault him for it. It’ll still be embarrassing though. 

“Yeah?” Phichit asks, turning back towards Yuuri with a curious tilt to his head, his expression suggesting that Yuuri’s tone had already raised a red flag or two. “What is it? I know that voice; what’s happened?”

“It’s nothing serious,” Yuuri reassures him, “It’s just … I need your help. I need advice.”

“Do you now?” Phichit’s eyebrow quirks and a small smirk appears upon his face, “Yuuri Katsuki needs my expert advice?”

“Don’t gloat, Phichit,” Yuuri interrupts, scowling. 

Seeing the expression that Yuuri now wears, Phichit backs down, coming to sit down beside Yuuri, taking up his position as Best Friend, “I’m sorry, I am actually listening. What’s up?”

Oh lord, Yuuri thinks, how is he to begin?

“You know that café that I go to some mornings?” he begins.

“Yeah, that one that looks as though it was styled after my grandma’s living room couch?”

“Yeah, that one.”

“What about it?”

“Well, I was there this morning,” Yuuri explained, trying to sort out his thoughts well enough to communicate the situation to Phichit, “and at first I was the only one there, ‘cause it was early, but then this guy walked in --”

“Was he hot?”

“Phichit!” Yuuri hisses, cheeks pink.

“Sorry … but was he?” Phichit raises his hands defensively, “Hey, man, I’m only asking the important questions here.”

“Well,” Yuuri blushes all the harder, “yes, he was, but let me finish my story.”

Phichit waves his hand, gesturing to Yuuri to continue his tale, while his other hand makes a gesture mimicking zipping his lips shut. He’s clearly saying that he’ll keep quiet while Yuuri tells the story, but Yuuri will only believe that when he sees it. Bless Phichit, he’s so easily excited. 

Yuuri relates his story to Phichit, with the occasional interruption of a gleeful exclamation on the part of his enthusiastic friend, describing his adventure in the best detail he can bring himself to provide, his cheeks getting ever pinker all the while. When he gets to the bit about the business card, Phichit gasps.

“A card? With a phone number? AND he called you cute? Ooh, Yuuri, my dude, you’re gonna get yourself a sugar daddy!”

“Phichit!” Yuuri hisses, feeling the heat from his blush radiate, feeling hot enough to fairly light a match. 

“Oh, come on, Yuuri,” Phichit sighs, “if anybody could use a handsome sugar daddy it’s you. He could get our front lock fixed for a start.”

“Phichit!” Yuuri admonishes, “That’s no reason to get into a relationship!”

“I think you’ll find it is, actually,” Phichit retorts, pretending to casually examine the well-manicured nails of his right hand. 

“Maybe for some people, but I’m not like that, and you know it.”

“I seem to remember a certain party and a certain pole dance very differently from you then.”

“I was drunk! And besides, that doesn’t mean that I’d be happy being some guy’s boy toy for money!” Yuuri raises his voice, not nearly so amused as Phichit seems to be by all this. 

“I’m sorry, Yuuri,” Phichit says, his voice hushed and calming, having noticed that Yuuri is visibly upset, “I was only joking. I didn’t mean any harm.”

“I know, I know you’re only joking,” Yuuri sighs, deflating, “I like your jokes, I’ve just had a long day, that’s all.”

“Yeah, you and me both,” Phichit chuckles, before gasping in realization, “Oh yeah, you said you were wanting advice.” He leans in and places a friendly arm around Yuuri’s shoulder, gesturing grandly with his other arm as if relaying to him some strange and exotic tale, “How may I guide you through this parade we call life?”

“You’re ridiculous,” Yuuri giggles, leaning into the friendly warmth, to which Phichit responds with a sort of nod of admission, signifying that he can cope with ridiculousness. “Well,” Yuuri continues, “I just don’t know if I should reply or not. I don’t know what it is he wants from me.”

“He called you cute, so that may be some amount of a clue.”

“Yeah, but, “Yuuri says with a voice full of uncertainty, “why would a movie star-looking guy like that call me cute?”

“’Cause you are, dummy.” Phichit chides him, “I know you have trouble believing it, but you are an attractive guy, Yuuri. Maybe you’re not the conventional supermodel type, but who really wants that anyway?”

“But …”

“Think about it like this,” Phichit interrupts the silence of Yuuri’s tapered off words, “beauty is in the eye of the beholder, right? So, if someone beholds you and goes ‘damn, he’s hot as hell, I'd ride that boy like a stolen bicycle,’ then who are we to argue?”

Yuuri smiles, doing his best to hold in a burst of giggles at his friend's word choice, “I guess you have a point.”

“Of course I do!” Phichit exclaims, “But we haven’t yet gotten to the big question.”

“The big question?” Yuuri wrinkles his face up in confusion.

“Yeah, the big question- what are you gonna text him?”

“Well,” Yuuri splutters, “I- I haven’t even decided that I will yet …”

“Oh c’mon, Yuuri, it’s a text, not a marriage proposal,” Phichit side-eyes him slyly, “though that’s not to say that it couldn’t eventually lead to one.”

“Oh, get ahold of yourself.”

“Seriously though,” Phichit says, right down to business, “what are we gonna say to him?”

“We?”

“Hey, you got me involved; we’re in this together now, buddy,” Phichit grins.

Yuuri grins back, “I suppose so.”

“Where’s your phone?”

Yuuri fishes said item from his pocket, a few pink lychee hard candy wrappers falling out along with it. He has a habit of chewing his nails when he gets nervous, so for the sake of his nails, he always has a supply of hard candy with which to distract himself. And he’s had plenty of need for distractions today. 

“And the card?”

He reaches over to grab the business card from where it rests on top of his blankets and hands it over to his friend, who whistles appreciatively at the sight of it.

“Well isn’t that one fancy-ass business card!” he exclaims, turning it over in his hands, watching the way the silver lettering gleams in the sickly, slightly green glow of their cheap light fixtures.

“Yeah, but what do I say?” Yuuri asks, opening his phone and staring at the dialer as if the pixels of his screen might lend him the solutions to all his social trials and tribulations. 

“Call me crazy,” Phichit begins, “but I think perhaps a ‘hello’ might be a good start.”

“Oh …” Yuuri mumbles, “yeah …”

“Just start with a ‘hello, this is Yuuri from the café’ so he’ll have a number to text back to, and you can just wait for a response,” Phichit shrugs, “or you could tell him that he’s hot stuff and that you wanna go out for ‘coffee,’ he pauses briefly before clarifying: “‘coffee,’ in this case, being a badly-disguised euphemism.”

“Yeah, I got that, thanks,” Yuuri grumbles, more amused than he’d admit, “I’ll start with just the ‘hello’ message.”

“Fine, if you’re sure you don’t wanna go for the ‘hot stuff’ option …” Phichit raises his arms in a gesture of defeat. 

“Yeah, yeah,” Yuuri mumbles dismissively, typing up the message while he still has the courage to do so, before doubt can set in again. He turns the screen, showing Phichit the message he’s written. “Does that sound good?”

“It sounds completely incapable of causing offence.”

“Oh good!”

“That wasn’t meant to be a stamp of approval, Yuuri.”

Yuuri shrugs, “Well, it’s good enough for me,” he says with a taunting smile, hitting send before he can think too much more about it, “I know you’d prefer something more adventurous, but conveniently for me, it’s my choice and not yours.” 

Phichit gasps, placing a dramatic hand over his heart, “Oh, you wound me!”

“Uh-huh, sure,” Yuuri coos with a mock patronizing tone, “anyway, what’s for dinner?”

“Um … instant ramen?”

Yuuri sighs. “Of course it is.”

Oh the glamor of the broke college-kid lifestyle. 

They eat their instant meal in relative silence, watching movies on Phichit’s multicolor sticker-covered old laptop, the flickering lights lulling them towards a late bedtime.

And somewhere across the city, in a penthouse apartment in a luxurious high-rise, Viktor Nikiforov wakes to the sound of a small pinging noise from his phone. Eyes squinting against the light from the screen, he reaches a lazy hand down to the fluffy white carpet upon which his phone rests, having slipped from his grasp in his sleep. Lifting it up to his eyes, a broad smile spreads across his face as he sees the name of the text message sender: Yuuri Katsuki.

The smile fades away again when he opens the message … and remembers that he doesn’t fucking read Japanese. He has no idea what Yuuri’s message says. Fuck.

Off to Google translate it is then … Just … Fuck …

Viktor pushes his face into the couch cushion in a moment of private embarrassment, muttering to himself, “I’m a fucking idiot …"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aren't they cute? Of course they are.
> 
> And at this point, I'd like to point your attention to the "graphic violence" warning, because it will not always be cute, and I don't want anyone to be unduly surprised or upset. Viktor is involved in organized crime, and both he and I have a flair for the dramatic. 
> 
> Thank you all for your continued support! I greatly appreciate it!


	5. Early Morning Conversation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Yuuri receives his first text back from Viktor, and they have a really nice conversation, culminating in a plan to meet at the café the next morning. Yuuri is excited at the prospect of a, dare he say it, coffee date, and Viktor seems to be excited for it too.  
> Phichit, for his part, gets hit in the face with a pillow, in a punishment that is not totally undeserved.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I apologize; I have no concept of a regular update schedule, and I will only very rarely update when I mean to. Rest assured, however, that none of my ongoing fics are in fact abandoned, even if it has been a while since the last update. The show must go on!

Yuuri awakens in the early morning to the sound of a text alert, that being the sound of a baby goat making the shrieking noise that baby goats are wont to make, which Phichit had set as a joke, and which Yuuri hadn’t yet bothered to change, since he gets texts so infrequently anyway. He’s fairly used to it by now, but the sound in itself is so inherently startling that it shocks him right out of sleep and into a whirl of sleepy confusion.

His head jerks up from where he’d pressed it into the pillow in his slumber, and he blearily fumbles about for his phone, knocking various objects off of his bedside table in his half-asleep blundering. He catches his glasses just before they go over the edge, smudging the lenses up a bit, but not too much for his vision to be truly obscured as he puts them on. Now no longer blind, Yuuri finds his phone easily. It lights up as he takes it in hand, unlocking it with a practiced motion and squinting against the glare in order to read the name of the text’s sender: Viktor. 

There was no last name listed, but seeing as Yuuri only knows the one “Viktor,” he hardly needs to guess. Any conceivable doubts as to the sender’s identity are dismissed entirely as Yuuri’s eyes run over the broken Japanese of the text.

“I am sorry, I do not understand Japan writing very well. Can we speak in English?”

Yuuri could practically hear the use of Google translate in the construction of the message, the words of which were followed by a series of emojis, the nervous sweating face one. Yuuri smiles despite himself, despite the early hour and the sudden awakening. Bless this silly man. 

Yuuri replies in English, telling Viktor that yes, they could speak in English if it’s easier for Viktor. Yuuri has studied English at school for years, and he’s quite good at it, enough to get by for certain. Just don’t ask him to give a dissertation on the history of neurosurgery or something of the like; his vocabulary might not extend to that. 

Phichit speaks Japanese pretty well, so that’s the language he and Yuuri generally use to converse, and on the rare occasion that they find a word or a phrase that the neither of them can translate, resorting to English usually does the trick. It wouldn’t be a stretch for Yuuri to use English as a sort of middle ground language to converse with Viktor. 

He is surprised by how quickly the response comes, mere seconds later, a pretty standard good morning message, followed by a series of emojis expressing Viktor’s apparent joy at Yuuri’s willingness to speak with him. Yuuri chuckles.

“What’s with all the emojis?” he asks Viktor, shooting off another text. 

Moments later, the response comes:

“I discovered them only recently. They’re fun, no?”

Yuuri takes a moment to consider his opinion on emojis. He hadn’t really thought about whether or not he thinks they’re fun; Phichit uses them all the time, but Yuuri himself isn’t much in the habit of doing so. If he’s honest with himself, it’s not because he has any negative opinion on the funny little faces and pictures, but rather because he’s terribly afraid of using the wrong one, of insulting someone or causing a misunderstanding by accident. But that’s certainly not something he wants to get into during his first text conversation with Viktor; he’d rather not fuck up this potential … whatever it is … before it’s even begun. 

“They are fun :)” He throws in a simple smiley face; he feels pretty confident that that one, at least, won’t cause any trouble. The others, he can’t guarantee so much. Phichit still won’t even tell him what the eggplant symbol means; what could it mean? It’s an eggplant? One would think that an eggplant means, quite literally, “eggplant,” but it must mean something else. There couldn’t be all that many opportunities to use an eggplant emoji otherwise, after all, how frequently does one find oneself needed to text people about eggplants? Not very frequently at all.

Before he sends the text, he does make sure to double and triple check that he is not in fact sending a winky face as opposed to a smiley, because that really could lead to a misunderstanding. He knows the implication of a winky face. Compared to the eggplant, it’s quite straightforward.

His mind can’t help but take him back to Phichit’s suggestion from last night, that Yuuri ought not to let a rich, pretty young thing slip away so easily, specifically due to the presence of the qualities “rich” and “pretty.” While Yuuri must admit that these things just may have an impact of his choice of a partner, he would consider personality, the capability of himself and another person to truly get along, to be the biggest point of interest. He wants to love somebody, and to be loved in return. Something deeper than the superficial.

He tries not to let it bother him, the fact that he hasn’t had that kind of love, at least romantic love, yet in his lifetime. There are people he loves, and who he believes do truly love him in return, people like his family, his dog, and Phichit, and while he appreciates their presence in his life more than he could possibly express, he can’t help but wish for something more. For romantic love. It’s stupid, but he wants it.

He feels so guilty about wanting it sometimes, especially on nights when sleep eludes him and he has nothing to do but think. Those nights are the worst. He tells himself that what he has ought to be enough. He should be content, and should be grateful for what he’s got.

Yet the fact remains that he isn’t, because human emotions isn’t nearly so simple or rational, and while he’s gotten used to the quiet resentment and silent self-disgust that comes with being of general disinterest in the romance department, this deal with Viktor, this actually being found interesting, is stressing him out. If anything is truly terra incognita for Yuuri, it’s this. 

Being the object of someone else’s attention is frightening, when you're used to being overlooked.

Yuuri’s own attention is brought back to his phone by yet another shrieking text alert.

“How was your night? You slept well, I hope?”

A bit of an abrupt transition from the previous topic, Yuuri considers, but then there isn’t really anywhere to go from talk of emojis; it’s a pretty short-lived conversation topic. And it’s not outside of the realm of appropriate discussion for new acquaintances in the early hours of the morning. It’s rather sweet, really, that Viktor is concerned about the quality of Yuuri’s rest.

“I did, yes,” Yuuri responds, thinking it best not to let Viktor know that it was his own text that woke Yuuri up so early, “Did you sleep well?”

“I slept fairly well, considering that I fell asleep on the couch instead of in my bed. I know I shouldn’t, that’s it’s bad for the back, but I was just too tired and lazy when I got home.”

“Oh no! Why were you so tired?” Yuuri asks, before quickly following with “If you don’t mind my asking.” He doesn’t want to seem intrusive, doesn’t want to come off as nosy. He doesn’t want to ruin something that hasn’t even begun yet.

“I don’t mind, Yuuri :) I’m pleased that you’re concerned for me.” Yuuri blushes at that. “I had a long day at work, that’s all. I had the night shift.”

“Oh, yeah, night shift is the worst! What do you do for work?”

The response isn’t quite so quick this time. Yuuri has a strange sense that the delay is a hesitation, that maybe Yuuri shouldn’t have asked. That’s ridiculous though; the hesitation is likely just a figment of Yuuri’s overactive imagination. Occupation is a normal introductory conversation topic, and anyway, why should Viktor want to hide his profession?

“I work in my family business, importing and exporting things from Russia, my home country. I’m part of the public relations department, so to speak.”

“Oh, that must be nice, getting to work with your family.”

Another prolonged pause. “I suppose so.”

It’s gotten awkward, for some reason that Yuuri cannot truly explain, so he chooses to gloss over the proverbial bump in their path of conversation by throwing in a few remarks about his own family and their business.

“My family had a business too, in my hometown. A hot spring that people would come to visit.”

“Had?”

Yuuri’s conversational segue had worked then, pulling them out of a potentially very awkward silence. That’s good. 

“Yeah, my parents had to close the hot spring due to financial troubles during the last recession. Many other local businesses had the same trouble and had to close too.”

“What a shame, I would have loved to come visit your family’s hot spring.”

Oh. Yuuri flushes and considers his possible reply for a moment before typing, “Well, it does still exist, even if it isn’t a public business anymore.” He hesitates before adding, “You could still come visit it.”

Perhaps he’s been a bit too bold, Yuuri worries then, perhaps he’s been presumptive in suggesting that Viktor could one day visit Yuuri’s home town. Why would Viktor want to come to Yuuri’s family’s shabby little establishment anyway? Viktor could probably go anywhere, to Paris, to Rome, staying in the finest hotel suites, lounging in the most luxurious spas. Why would someone who could do all that want to stay in Yuuri’s home in Hasetsu? 

Why would someone who could go anywhere, do anything, be with anyone, bother with speaking toYuuri? That’s the real question, isn’t it? Phichit would tell him that that’s nonsense, that Yuuri ought to think more highly of himself, but he still asks himself that sort of thing from time to time. Luckily, he’s got another text from Viktor to interrupt his self-doubt.

“I’d love to come visit your home, Yuuri!”

Yuuri has noticed, over the course of this conversation, that Viktor has a tendency to use Yuuri’s name, despite the fact that Yuuri would know well enough that he was the person being addressed, even if Viktor didn’t call him by name. Yuuri finds he rather likes it; it’s like Viktor is making a point of personalizing his phrases just for Yuuri. It makes him feel rather special, despite his own habit of declaring himself otherwise.

“Say, Yuuri, would you like to meet for coffee at that café tomorrow? The café at which we met?”

Yuuri hesitates a little. He hasn’t been on a … coffee date since … he honestly doesn’t know when. He must have at some point, but he supposes it hadn’t been memorable. That or it had been so deeply embarrassing that Yuuri had deliberately forgotten about it. 

But … Viktor seems rather nice, and anyway, even if it turns out that he isn’t Yuuri’s type, Yuuri won’t find out one way or the other unless he spends some more time with the man. Yuuri’s rather large pessimistic side tells him that this can’t go well, but he pushes that sentiment down, as this could just as easily end quite happily. He’s gonna go for it.

“Yeah, I’d love to! :)”

“Excellent! Same time as before then? Or would you rather meet later in the day?”

“No,” Yuuri responds, checking his schedule, which he still hasn’t managed to memorize, “The same time is good for me. The morning is really the only time I have open on weekdays.”

“Fantastic! I’ll see you tomorrow morning then, Yuuri! I hope you have a good day today.”

“Thanks! See you then! :)”

Yuuri thought that to be the end of the conversation for now, but there is one last message for him.

“I’m looking forward to it :)” Viktor replies.

Yuuri allows himself a little smile. There is a moment of peace, in which Yuuri contemplates the fact that he has plans, actual social plans, with a person who is neither a relative nor his roommate. A date … sort of. Neither of them had used the exact word, but there was still something of the spirit of it, and it lingered in Yuuri’s mind, bringing happy little butterflies to flutter in his chest.

The peace doesn’t last long, breaking like the shattering of glass as Phichit’s face pops up right in front of Yuuri’s face, scaring the ever-living shit out of him.

“AHHHH!” he shrieks in what could possibly be a contender for the most undignified noise of surprise ever made.

“Yeah, hi. Who ya texting, Yuuri, old buddy, old pal?” Phichit inquires with an impish grin and a mischievously cocked eyebrow.

Yuuri clocks him directly in the face with his pillow.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If I'm honest, I'm overly excited for them to finally properly get together, not for the romance of it, but for the fact that they have to get together before shit can fall apart, and if I'm honest, shit falling apart is what I'm best at writing.   
> There will of course be a happy ending, for I am a weak little piglet of a person, but violence is my specialty. I suppose it's Viktor's specialty too, really ...


	6. Cigarette Burns

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Their coffee date goes wonderfully and they plan to go out together again. 
> 
> Viktor is excited for their next meeting, but he realizes that he's made a mistake, one that could have gone very badly. He resolves to be more vigilant. 
> 
> This turbulent turn of events remains entirely unknown to Yuuri.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay so this chapter ended up being like twice the length of the previous ones, so have fun with that, y'all. 
> 
> I've been having a lot of health problems lately, so I haven't managed to grind out fic chapters as quickly as I'd generally like. The school quarter will be over soon, mercifully, and I'll be able to write more as I stay home and concentrate on getting well. Also, because I'm that person, I intend to do illustrations for this fic the way I have for "Forget Me Not," so look out for that too. 
> 
> Anyway, I hope that you all enjoy this chapter, and that you find yourselves looking forward to the next one :)

Yuuri decides skip his usual early morning practice at the skating rink on Friday morning, the morning he’s meant to meet Viktor for a second time, in favor of spending a good hour and a half fretting over getting ready. 

In skipping practice, not only does he have more time to spend getting ready, or rather panicking about getting ready on time, but he can also be more reliably sure that he won’t be gross and sweaty upon meeting Viktor again. That is, if he can keep his nervous sweating under control … but that’s what they make antiperspirant for, right? It’s possible that skating would have done him good by getting rid of some of his nervous energy, but he opted to accept more nervousness as the price for avoiding the heartbreak of bad post-exercise body odor.

Then comes the outfit; what should he wear for a coffee date? What do people generally wear for coffee dates? Regular clothes? But Yuuri’s regular, everyday wardrobe includes sweatpants and exercise gear, and he can’t help but think that sweatpants are fairly high up on the list of things not to wear when trying to impress someone. He hasn’t got much in the way of clothes that are fancier than sweatpants, apart from his suit, which even he must admit fits him very badly, and anyway, a suit is certainly too much for a coffee shop rendezvous. Really, it’d be best suited for funerals; nobody much cares about what you’re wearing at a funeral, so long as it’s a dark color, and Yuuri’s own suit is a pretty universally inoffensive shade of charcoal grey.

Jeans! He has jeans, which are a step up from sweatpants at the least, and if he pairs it with, say, a button-down shirt, and maybe does a little something with his hair, he could look quite presentable. He has to do a bit of digging for them, as he hasn’t worn them in a while, but in one of his dresser drawers he finds his sole pair of jeans: dark blue and somewhat creased from their long stay at the bottom of a drawer, but still much more suitable than any of the pairs of track pants that Yuuri had dug through to get to them. 

As he pulls the jeans on, he discovers that they are much more snug around the butt and thighs than he remembered them being last time he’d worn them, clinging to the curves of his form. He’s been skating for a couple hours, exercising hard, almost every day for a few months now, and while he knew that such an activity would do some amount of muscle development from the waist down, he hadn’t realized just how much his physique had actually changed during that time. 

Going over to the mirror, Yuuri appraises his appearance in the jeans, turning to view himself from a variety of angles, and he decides that these shall be the pants reserved exclusively for dates. They accentuate his ass and thighs in a way that none of his track pants or sweatpants ever could, and damn if that isn’t a huge confidence boost! He’s still pretty fucking nervous, but that’s only because he’d been really, really fucking nervous before putting the jeans on. Being only “pretty nervous” is actually a vast improvement, he considers.

It’s all about finding a balance, as Phichit had once explained to him. You have to find the sweet spot between looking good and looking casual; you’ve gotta look good, but you mustn’t make it obvious that you’ve gone to an effort to do so. Yuuri had nodded along to Phichit’s advice, a strained smile plastered across his face as he tried, and failed, to understand the explanation his friend was giving him. Yuuri could understand the concept, but the how of it, how to actually pull off such a feat, still eludes him to this day.

Now dressed, which is truly the bare minimum for going out to meet someone, Yuuri begins to consider what to do with his hair, fiddling with it while gazing in the mirror. Really, with it being so short, there’s not a whole lot to be done with Yuuri’s hair, however much Phichit insists on the magical properties of styling gel and flat irons. He goes to the cupboard, opens it, and grabs the styling gel, which Phichit had welcomed him to, but he’d hardly ever used. 

Scooping a small amount of the alarmingly brightly colored jar, something on the verge of neon orange, Yuuri runs his hands lightly through his hair, slicking it back. Christ, he looks like a mix between a 1950’s era goody-two-shoes boy and Count fucking Dracula. He ruffles his hands through his hair, fluffing it up a bit, just enough that his hair no longer looks like some kind of shiny black helmet stuck to his skull. 

There, that’s not too bad. His hair is pushed back a bit, but it’s still messy enough for him to avoid looking like he’s been dressed by his mother for a school yearbook photo. Looking like you’ve been dressed by your mom is decidedly not sexy.

He’s ready, at least in that there is nothing more exactly for him to do, but mentally, he doesn’t feel the slightest bit ready. He wishes that his dog were here, so that he could calm himself with warm, comforting poodle cuddles, but he settles for wrapping his arms around, and practically strangling, his anxiety pillow. Said pillow is an ugly-as-all-hell green body pillow with a lopsided happy face drawn on it in smudged sharpie by his sister, Mari. 

She’d presented it to him before he left to go to Tokyo for university with a grin, as if it were a joke gift, what with the wobbly smiley face in black permanent marker, but Yuuri knows that the unspoken truth of it is that she wanted to help him to feel less afraid of going off to live on his own. She’d also known that she needn’t say her intentions aloud, that pointing out Yuuri’s insecurities would do nothing to help him overcome them. She’d just given him the hideously ugly, but extremely soft, body pillow, and a big hug.

Mari was every bit the perfect big sister, down to her foundations. 

Snuggle-strangling the pillow seems to help, and Yuuri sits up on the edge of his bed, adjusting his glasses with a lightly shaking finger and reaching down to straighten and smooth out his button-down shirt. He’s early, but he’s entirely out of things to distract himself with in preparation, and the time has come to get up, slip some shoes and a coat on, and start heading over to the café, before he can freak himself out and lose his nerve.

He knows that it’s the anticipation of a social event that is truly anxiety-inducing; he’s always terribly nervous before he gets there, but once he arrives, he always relaxes eventually, and he often finds himself having a good time, despite his earlier reservations. Regardless of how his hands may tremble now, he’ll probably have a good time once he’s sat down in a familiar seat in a familiar café, with a hot drink and perhaps some kind of pastry. And even if it doesn’t go all that well, it’ll have been an adventure at the very least. Chock it up to a new and valuable life experience, right?

Variety is the spice of life, and that means, Yuuri supposes, that things have to go wrong at least some of the time. And Yuuri could use some variety anyway, some small diversion from the monotonous routine of school and work and sleep. He flushes as he can practically hear Phichit’s voice in his head pointing out that Yuuri could use some “spice” in his life as well, “spice” in this case being a poorly-disguised euphemism for a romantic and/or sexual entanglement. 

Well … Yuuri certainly wouldn’t mind a bit of that.

He stands abruptly, crossing the room to grab his coat off its hook by the door, pulling on and patting himself down, checking his pockets for his keys and wallet, satisfied to find them safely where he expected them to be. Before he forgets, he walks back to grab his phone, shoving it into his coat pocket as well, securely zipping it up so as not to lose the three items that his life truly revolves around. 

He buttons the coat securely, well aware that it’s going to be freaking freezing outside at best, then takes a deep breath and yanks the door open, stepping out into a bracingly chilled wind. He knows that it isn’t cold enough to snow, but god, when a chilly breeze works its way through the fibers of his coat and shirt the raise goosebumps on his skin, it certainly feels like it’s that cold. He hunches his shoulders and flips his collar up to protect his neck from the cold as he locks the door behind him before replacing the keys securely in his pocket.

He walks quickly, making a bee-line for the café, a desire to get indoors and warm winning out over the anxious hesitation that would otherwise have slowed his steps. Upon realizing that, at this fast pace, he’d going to arrive embarrassingly early, he pauses for a moment, just until a cold wind sweeps its way up under the back of his coat, sending a cascade of chills and goosebumps over his back and causing him to take off again with a vengeance. 

Upon stepping in through the café door, a glance at the novelty clock, a kitschy monstrosity shaped like a slightly cross-eyed cartoon cat hanging on the wall above the register, reveals that Yuuri has arrived over half an hour in advance of the agreed time he’d established with Viktor. He goes and claims a table, his usual one, the one he’d been sitting at when he’d met Viktor, in fact, dropping himself heavily into the seat with a sigh.

Tapping the tabletop with his fingertips, nails clicking quietly on the surface, Yuuri debates as to whether or not he should get a cocoa to tide himself over until Viktor arrives. He decides against it, thinking that it might seem rude to order anything before Viktor arrives, especially considering that Viktor isn’t late, it’s just that Yuuri is unnecessarily ahead of schedule. Sitting there by himself does though give him a good opportunity to settle himself down, to chill the fuck out as it were, contrary to his nature though that may be.

Viktor, to his credit, shows up early, though not nearly as early as Yuuri. Truthfully, it’s only just early enough to count as “early” as opposed to “on time.” A scant two minutes before their planned rendezvous, the man opens the café door and swirls into the building like an unusually charming hurricane personified, his long overcoat billowing behind him as he strides over the doorstep. He’s all smiles once his eyes meet Yuuri’s and he flashes his unnaturally white teeth to Yuuri where he sits at his claimed table.

It’s funny that that’s what strikes Yuuri’s attention. Of course, Yuuri appreciates a pretty smile, and Viktor has one of the prettiest he’s seen, a smile that reaches his eyes and lights them up like paper lanterns of light blue. But his smile doesn’t only reveal something about his personality, but also something about his status, financially at least. He’s definitely had his teeth bleached, professionally, and they do look nice, but they also kind of look like he’s been eating powdered sugar doughnuts in the face of a nuclear blast, they're so white. 

It’s at this juncture that he realizes he’s been staring at Viktor’s mouth, and the man is standing above him, looking down at Yuuri with a somewhat perplexed smile upon his face.

“What is it? Have I something on my face?” Viktor asks, as if on cue, and Yuuri blushes oh so promptly, as if on cue himself.

It doesn’t much help that his brain supplies an answer to Viktor’s inquiry as to if he had something on his face, and the answer that his brain supplies is: “handsomeness.” It may be true, but it’s not exactly something that Yuuri can say aloud, is it? He’s not nearly so suave as to pull that off without looking incredibly silly. 

“Wha- oh, no, there’s nothing on your face,” Yuuri answers, spluttering as he tries to recover from the self-induced shock. 

“Oh,” Viktor says, slipping gracefully into the chair across the table from Yuuri, “and here I was hoping that I would have ‘beauty’ on my face …”

Were Yuuri drinking something at that moment, he likely would have spat it out in that moment, in a classic comedic fashion. He thanks his past self with sincerity for deciding not to get a cocoa prior to Viktor’s arrival; he’d have hated for their first exchange that morning to have been Yuuri spraying cocoa all over Viktor’ pristine white shirt as the man stood before him. 

Yuuri also finds himself wondering for a moment if Viktor can read minds, or, if not, if Yuuri is just so completely transparent that his thoughts could be read by anyone who could see his face … That would certainly be the means to a sudden demise by embarrassment. As it is, he’s scrambling for a reply to Viktor’s comment, and he’s not coming up anything good. 

Mercifully, Viktor appears to sense Yuuri’s distress and guides the conversation to flow in a less awkward direction, completely unprompted. He asks Yuuri about school, reasonably safe topic, and they chat about that for a while: about what Yuuri is studying, about which subjects he likes and which subjects he doesn’t like, etcetera, etcetera. 

Yuuri doesn’t generally like talking about himself; he’s always self-conscious that he may seem arrogant in talking about himself, and doubtful that anyone really would want to hear about his boring, average life in any case. He doesn’t like talking about himself, and yet, Viktor pulls the information out of Yuuri so easily, makes Yuuri feel oddly at ease, seemingly totally engaged in whatever Yuuri has to say. 

Viktor knows just exactly when to nod his head, when to say “uh-huh” or “and then what happened?” in just the right way to keep Yuuri talking without fear. Yuuri can’t help but notice, however, as he finishes up a funny story involving Phichit and an extremely irate chicken, that Viktor has spoken only minimally about himself in all this time, always steering the conversation back towards Yuuri. 

Viktor talks a lot, Yuuri thinks, but he actually says very little. At least when it comes to himself.

Yuuri wonders why that might be. Perhaps Viktor just doesn’t much like talking about himself for the same reasons that Yuuri doesn’t; perhaps he doesn’t think his life to be interesting enough to capture Yuuri’s attention. Or, a smaller, darker part of his mind supplies, he’s just got a whole lot to hide. Yuuri dismisses the idea instantly. Someone with that sort of shady history would hardly be likely to choose a squishy little nerd like Yuuri as someone to talk to. And a career criminal or something of the sort probably wouldn’t be nearly this friendly or outgoing. 

Viktor probably just works for some corporation and doesn’t want to get in trouble with his employers for blabbing about business matters. That’s not such an unusual thing.

So, okay, Viktor doesn’t discuss work, and that’s alright. As for other stuff, more personal stuff, maybe Viktor just needs some prompting, like Yuuri himself does. Maybe it’d help for him to see that Yuuri really is interested in hearing his story. Yuuri thinks he’ll try that. 

“So, Viktor,” Yuuri begins when the first convenient silence presents itself, choosing a harmless, not too personal question to start off with, “what do you like to do in your free time?”

Viktor chuckles, smiling that movie-star white-toothed smile, “Well, to be honest, I don’t actually get a lot of free time. The hours at my work change all the time, and it’s hard to do things outside of work with such an unpredictable schedule …”

“Oh,” Yuuri says as Viktor’s voice kind of trails off, “I’ve had jobs like that, where they don’t give you regular hours and you end up getting called in to work in the middle of the night.”

“You have?” Viktor prompts.

“Yeah, it was a shitty convenience store job. Terrible hours, rude boss, low pay, and mind-numbing monotony, but I had bills to pay and it was a job, even if it sucked,” Yuuri sighs, “but we’ve all been there at one point or another, right?” 

Viktor looks down for a moment, almost sheepishly, and it occurs to Yuuri that perhaps Viktor has never had money problems like that, and he might not actually have any idea what Yuuri was talking about there, at least not through personal experience. Suddenly feeling incredibly awkward, Yuuri scrambles for something else to say.

“So, I’ve complained to you about my job,” Yuuri grins, “it’s only fair that you get to complain to me about something too.”

Viktor smiles back, somewhat hesitantly, and Yuuri worries that perhaps his attempts at steering their conversation were a bit ham-handed, but his worries are dispersed somewhat as Viktor replies with no apparent discomfort in his voice.

“Well, as I said, I don’t do much outside of work. I guess that’s really the only thing I have to complain about. I’m not particularly happy with my job, and it would be nice to have something else in my life besides work.”

Viktor appears sincerely discontent, and Yuuri says the first thing that comes to mind to comfort him.

“Well, this is outside of work, us getting coffee.”

The blush that spreads across Yuuri’s cheeks is instantaneous, but the grins that he receives in return for his statement is nothing short of blinding. 

“It is!” the man exclaims happily, before a look of realization crosses his face and he exclaims again, “Coffee!”

“What?” Yuuri asks, not entirely sure what’s happening just now.

“We haven’t gotten our coffee yet!”

“Oh …”

Yes, they have indeed been sitting here chatting all this time, in a coffee shop, having entirely forgotten to go order some coffee. Aside from the initial embarrassment that comes from realizing that he’s been so wrapped up in his conversation with Viktor that he’s forgotten the thing he literally always comes here to get, Yuuri also experiences a rush of apologetic embarrassment from realizing that they’ve been hogging a table in a business without buying anything. Which is a bit rude, unintentional though their rudeness may be. 

Yuuri stands abruptly, startling Viktor somewhat, going by the expression that crosses the man’s face.

“I’ll go get us something to drink,” Yuuri says, reaching for his wallet, “What would you like …”

His voice trails off as he feels the light, warm touch of a hand, Viktor’s hand, on Yuuri’s own, the one with which he’d been reaching for his wallet. 

“Let me,” Viktor says gently, standing up himself.

“But-” Yuuri feels obligated to argue, to insist upon paying, even though the knowledge weighs heavy on his mind that, should he splurge on coffee and hot cocoa for himself and Viktor, he won’t have the funds to come here again, not for a few days anyway. 

Viktor interrupts him, his voice placating, “I just had my pay day, please, let me buy a drink for my new friend. What would you like?” 

Yuuri nods in assent and answers the question put to him, “I’d like a hot cocoa please.”

Viktor smiles and turns, coat swishing behind him, to stride over to the counter to order their drinks. Watching him, Yuuri still feels a little awkward about letting the man pay for him. On the other hand, though, if it’s Viktor’s pay day, and if Viktor is genuinely pleased to buy Yuuri a cocoa, Yuuri’s not going to stop him. Frankly, no matter how awkward Yuuri may feel, he’s not exactly wealthy enough to argue. Yuuri doesn’t like taking charity, but he’ll certainly accept a gift. 

Observing Viktor as he stands at the counter, chatting with the cashier, Yuuri notices that there’s a small hole in the fabric of Viktor’s coat, near the bottom, where Viktor may not have noticed it yet. Viktor turns, walking back to the table at which Yuuri sits with two steaming cups in hands, and … make that two holes. There’s another one, close to the first. As Viktor gets closer, Yuuri realizes that the edges of the holes seem to be scorched, like the holes were made by something hot burning its way through the cloth. How did those get there?

Viktor sits, sliding a hot cup of cocoa over to rest in front of Yuuri, and Yuuri thanks him, still somewhat distracted by the burnt holes, by this strange, out of place imperfection on a seemingly perfect man. He speaks up, feeling a bit sorry for Viktor, knowing that it’s a very nice, and probably very expensive, coat that he’s about to tell Viktor is ruined.

“Viktor,” he says, pointing helpfully with his finger to indicate the damaged area, “sorry, but you’ve got some holes in your coat.”

Viktor looks down, following the path drawn by Yuuri’s extended digit, and furrows his eyebrows as he notices the holes in his fine coat, fingering the cloth to assess the extent of the damage. 

“Damn …” he curses gently, under his breath.

“How do you think those got there?” Yuuri asks, genuinely puzzled as to how such holes might appear, particularly while escaping notice. If Viktor had brushed up against something burning hot at some point, he’d probably have noticed. 

Viktor drops the fabric he’d been inspecting, letting it fall back down to drape off of the chair he’s sitting in, and sighs, “Probably a cigarette burn. I must have set it down, not realizing that my coat was there and not my ashtray.”

“Oh …” Yuuri responds, thinking that Viktor really ought to take more care with his cigarettes; people have accidentally burned their houses down before with forgotten cigarettes. He decides to voice the opinion, for the sake of Viktor’s wardrobe if nothing else.

“You should be more careful with your cigarettes, Viktor, they can be dangerous.”

Viktor smiles and Yuuri, if he didn’t know better, would have thought it to be somewhat flirtatious, a theory which is backed up as Viktor opens his mouth to speak.

“Are you worried for me, Yuuri?” he says, his grin widening to somewhere on the verge of wolfishness. 

“Well, yeah,” Yuuri blushes, embarrassed, but strongly thinking that he’s more than willing to participate if flirting is indeed what’s happening here, “I don’t want you catching on fire or something.”

“Thank you, that’s sweet,” Viktor reaches across to gently pat Yuuri’s hand where it rests on the table top next to his cup of cocoa, “I’m happy to have someone concerned for me.”

Yuuri isn’t sure what to say to that, so he just lifts his hand to pat Viktor’s own in a mirroring of Viktor’s previous movement, muttering, “Um, well, of course.” 

Yuuri is a worrier by nature, and he’s finding Viktor to be quite appealing, so it’s not out of his way to fret about Viktor catching himself on fire in a tragic cigarette accident, however unlikely such a tragedy might be. Sometimes he even worries about himself or Phichit getting hurt because of a cigarette catching their apartment alight, and neither of them even smoke. Of course he worries for Viktor too … 

They chat for a while longer, sipping on their respective hot beverages, Viktor also purchasing them each a pastry at one point, despite Yuuri’s protesting that Viktor didn’t have to pay. Viktor appears so pleased, though, when Yuuri accepts and bites into his pastry, which is frankly delicious, that Yuuri doesn’t really mind so much. If it makes Viktor that happy, Yuuri will let him pay for food today. Not every day they meet though, mind. 

Yuuri enjoys their easy conversation, happy that, as the conversation goes on, Viktor seems more willing to speak about himself and not just about Yuuri. He tells a story about a friend of his from when he’d been in school, a guy named Chis, who’d once had a truly unfortunate run in with a piñata, which, while drunk, Chris had mistaken for a pool floatie. He’d realized his mistake quickly once the piñata hit the water at it rapidly grew saturated and sank, taking all the candy to the bottom of the pool. 

They laugh together, almost crying with the hilarious image of all that wet candy dissolving at the bottom of Chris’s swimming pool. That is, until Yuuri’s phone alarm goes off, reminding him that this is in fact still a week day, and he still has classes to go to, though, mercifully, they aren’t until the afternoon.

Yuuri’s hesitant to leave, dawdling a bit, wishing he could just skip today’s lectures, but the promises he’s made to his parents about being good while he’s away in Tokyo drive him towards the door nonetheless. Coming up with the money to send Yuuri here for school had been difficult, and Yuuri feels obligated to do his very best at university, as a way of repaying them. He’s determined to follow through, even if it means leaving Viktor just when they’ve gotten a really good dialog going. 

“Sorry,” he says, buttoning his coat, “but I’ve gotta go. I’ve got class soon …”

“Don’t worry about it,” Viktor assures him, standing along with him, evidently intending to follow Yuuri out the door. 

As they reach the door and step out into the cold, Yuuri takes a deep breath of the cold air, gathering his courage for the question he’s now decided he wants to ask. 

“Um …” he begins, inwardly kicking himself. Ah yes, he’s ever the suave playboy, isn’t he, he thinks sarcastically.

Viktor looks at him expectantly, blue eyes looking even bluer outside in natural light, colder, maybe … glacial blue. 

“Uh,” he continues, pulling himself together, “I know you said your hours are kinda unpredictable, but are you doing anything this Sunday?”

Viktor smiles, replying, “No, not that I’m aware.”

“Well,” Yuuri ventures, feeling the slightest bit of nervous sweat rendering his hands clammy, “Would you like to meet up again this Sunday? Maybe go see a movie or something?”

Viktor’s smile widens, his eyes lighting up. 

“I would love to, Yuuri!” he exclaims, bouncing a little on his feet and excitedly reaching forward to take Yuuri’s hands, which are already growing a bit chilly, in his, “I’ll get us tickets to the Shinagawa Aquarium! I heard that you can walk through a tunnel underwater, with the fish swimming all around! Would you like that, Yuuri?”

A bit surprised by the intensity of Viktor’s childlike delight at going to an aquarium and flustered by the fact that Viktor is holding Yuuri’s hands right now, Yuuri simply nods his agreement.

He is surprised again, then, when Viktor gathers him into a brief but warm hug. Letting go, Viktor grins again.

“Thank you, Yuuri. I’m really looking forward to it. We can work out a meeting place and time over text, okay?”

“Sure,” Yuuri agrees, smiling as he finds Viktor’s enthusiasm to be contagious. 

It’s at that moment that Yuuri’s phone beeps again, reminding him that he’d better get a move on if he doesn’t want to be that asshole sneaking into the hall during the middle of a lecture. Besides the telling-off that he might receive from the teacher for coming in late, Yuuri dreads having the whole class turn around and stare judgmentally at him. Positive attention, he can deal with; negative attention, however, now that makes his palms sweat. 

“Oh shit!” he exclaims, seeing the time, “Sorry, but I really have to take off.”

“Okay,” Viktor says, and as Yuuri begins to turn to speed-walk away, he adds on, shouting “Have a good day!”

Yuuri, well on his way to jogging as he starts off in earnest, shouts back, “Thanks, you too!”

As he leaves Viktor and the café behind, Yuuri grins stupidly to himself. He and Viktor are getting together again this weekend, and this time, it is most definitely a date, a proper one where they’ll go out somewhere together, not just a coffee date. 

Wait until Phichit hears about this … 

***

Viktor watches Yuuri run off, still smiling, feeling giddy from the morning they’d had together. Being with Yuuri was a breath of fresh air after years spent underwater, he was a cold glass of water after years in a desert, he was … so very lovely. And Viktor would be seeing him again this Sunday, so soon, a thought which made his heart beat all the faster in anticipation.

As Yuuri disappears around a corner, however, the smile on Viktor’s face fades, then disappears. He turns abruptly, body language growing tight and closed, and heads off in a different direction than the way Yuuri had gone, walking vaguely in the direction of his apartment. He’s excited to see Yuuri again, he’s itching for it, but his excitement is tempered by a distressing thought: that Viktor wasn’t careful enough. 

He should have checked, should have noticed the holes in his coat and thrown it away immediately, exchanging it for another one to wear to meet Yuuri at the café. He needs to be more careful, more cautious, more vigilant in separating the rest of his life from his time with Yuuri. The two were simply unmixable, like oil and water, incompatible, and they absolutely could not both exist in one place at one time. 

Viktor’s lucky that Yuuri has probably never seen a real gun in his life, let alone seen one in action. If Yuuri had, he might have realized …

Those weren’t cigarette burns. They were bullet holes.


	7. Bullet Holes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Flashback to the night before and the events that led to the bullet holes in Viktor's coat.   
> Viktor has some realizations about what a relationship with Yuuri will really mean.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello, I am terrible at keeping to any semblance of a schedule, and for that I apologize. I want to thank you all for sticking with me despite that. I love all of you.
> 
> I did actually do some stuff this summer though. Went on a road trip, impulsively decided to learn both Italian and Japanese, did a bit of art ... everything but write fic, really. My bad. But I am back, and I've already started in on the chapter after this one, so hopefully I won't take too terribly long getting that posted.
> 
> Oh, yeah, fair warning, this is when the violence starts to turn up. There's some light murder going on in this chapter. Just wait til later though, I've got a real good one laid out ... *barely concealed maniacal laughter*

Assassination attempts are frightfully banal. 

Viktor’s seen enough of them in his time, more than enough, and he’s no longer nearly as impressed with them as he’d been at the start. He’s witnessed them, helped orchestrate them, and, from time to time, been the target of them, and at this point, they’re quite frankly old-hat. 

He usually knew when they were coming. He had, over the years, constructed an information network of sorts out of people who owed him favors, or on whom Viktor had collected unsavory information that they’d rather he kept to himself. Blackmail was distasteful, yes, but if it meant that Viktor would have an advantage against those who would do him and his people harm, he’d do it all the same. His network yielded all sorts of juicy tidbits, from the more quotidian sex scandals and affairs of the rich, famous, and influential, to the more significant cases of embezzlement and thievery. And occasionally, just occasionally, the whisperings of murder would float to Viktor’s ear and catch his attention. 

Typically, the planned murders that Viktor caught wind of weren’t very significant to him personally. People try to kill each other all the time, and they have done so since the beginning of time, without much real significance. Viktor only ever gets involved if it’s a matter of business.

Last night, his business had been to meet with a man, a “Mr. Smith,” about an agreement for Viktor’s people to transport some of his merchandise, drugs, as Viktor understood it, discreetly into Japan. “Mr. Smith” was certainly not the man’s real name, but that hardly mattered. So long as he dealt honestly and paid on time without trying any funny business, his true name was really besides the point. The name didn’t have to be real so long as the money was.

The man apparently wasn’t beloved of the local yakuza, and had elected instead to deal with Viktor, to whom he’d been referred by one of Viktor’s father’s more trusted agents. Mr. Smith had appeared somewhat frustrated with how the proceedings had slowed when he’d enlisted Viktor as a middleman, but Viktor had explained, patiently but firmly, that this was the way things had to be, seeing as he, the client, had chosen the indirect route, and that it would be unwise to waste Viktor’s valuable time. 

Viktor, on his own part, didn’t wish to antagonize the local gangsters any more than strictly necessary. Everyone’s just trying to make a living in a hard world, after all. There may be no honor among criminals, and very little remorse, but there remained a sort of kinship among those who know the life.

The meeting hadn’t appeared unusual at first. Mr. Smith had struck Viktor as innately irritating, but his deal appeared solid. The man also appeared rather jumpy, his eyes swiveling around, darting to follow the movements of the waiters and other diners around them, startling at every clink of glasses or clatter of silverware. That was suspicious, and Viktor’s suspicion grew as their conversation went on. The man was too afraid. 

Third party involvement. The bastard had gotten another party involved, and worse yet, he’d pissed them off, and then led their pissed-off asses straight to Viktor and his people. Fuck.

He had about two seconds after this realization to hit the deck before the bullets started to fly, his coat, which he’d left on, billowing behind him as he dove for the floor under their table. Mr. Smith hadn’t been so quick to act, for all his nervous twitching, and Viktor had heard the sickening sounds of multiple hard bullets coming into contact with soft flesh. And the screaming, of course. From under the table, Viktor saw Mr. Smith jerk wildly once or twice, limbs flopping about, as metal penetrated weak, yielding skin, reducing the man, a human being, to not much more than lifeless meat. Viktor could see the spreading crimson stain of blood seeping into the fabric of the man’s trousers and dripping down the legs of the chair. 

It should elicit more of a reaction than it does, more of an emotional response than it does, Viktor knows, but knowing that he should doesn’t mean that he can make himself do so. Blood. The price of fucking with people who carry guns. Viktor sees a lot of it. Some his own. Most of it not.

Viktor was quick to retrieve his own gun, which he rarely went anywhere without, from his under-arm holster, but he found, upon cautiously emerging from beneath the table, that there was nothing to shoot at. The people who had shot Mr. Smith had no other goal, it would appear, and had legged it as soon as they’d taken out the target, ensuring that they would not be around when the police arrived. A wise plan, one that Viktor was to emulate. He could certainly bribe or threaten his way out of any questioning or suspicion, but he’d rather not have to. 

A quick investigation had confirmed that Viktor had managed to keep clean, Mr. Smith’s blood and brain tissue ending up on the chair, table, carpet, and the wall behind him, but having missed Viktor’s person entirely. How very fortunate. He likes this outfit. 

Looking back over his shoulder to where Mr. Smith had sat, Viktor’s eyes cast an unfeeling glance over the body that now sat there, slumped, limbs sticking out in positions that they wouldn’t have held in life. The body had a person in it once, but now it was an empty shell, vacated by its owner, and Viktor couldn’t say whether the world was better now, or worse, without him in it. Viktor couldn’t much care. He hadn’t known the man.

He did know, however, that someone had interfered in his business. They would have to be dealt with, if not by Viktor, then by someone else in the syndicate. They couldn’t just let such things go; one doesn’t maintain a position of power by letting others simply trample all over one’s dealings.

And in this case, there had certainly been a lot of witnesses to the interference. Luckily, there weren’t many there remaining in the restaurant; everyone had fled as the bullets ripped their way through the bulk of Mr. Smith’s body, and those who hadn’t left still cowered low to the ground, too distracted by their own terror to pay much notice to Viktor as he replaced the gun in its holster and swiftly made his way back to the entrance of the restaurant. 

With so many people having been around at the moment of the shooting, word would undoubtedly spread. Word would also have to spread that those who had messed with a syndicate deal had learned to regret it. A reputation was at stake. And Viktor was personally annoyed. He hadn’t been able to finish his meal.

Although he was certainly eager to depart from the scene, Viktor paused by the desk in the entryway and, after a moment’s thought, reached for his wallet, the black leather smooth in his hands as he retrieved what he estimated to be a couple thousand dollars in cash and placed it into the subtly labeled tip jar. There were likely many people who had run out, driven by gunfire, without paying for their meals, and lord knows the mess that Mr. Smith’s shredded corpse had made would cost a pretty penny to clean up. And he’d rather this incident didn’t set the restaurant back enough for it to close. He likes it here. 

Not to mention the fright that the poor wait staff had gotten; that sort of thing can ruin your week, and the waiter he’d briefly spoken to had been ever the perfect host. The wine he’d recommended had been excellent. This was no five-star restaurant, and the wine list was more in the thirty-dollar range than three hundred, but Viktor was no wine snob, and he’d enjoyed it thoroughly. A two-hundred-and-seventy-dollar difference did not necessarily mean a two-hundred-and-seventy-dollar improvement in taste. The least Viktor could do was tip a couple thousand dollars for their trouble. He’d have given more, but that was all the cash he’d had on him at the time, and there was no one at the counter to charge his card.

Of course, the average person will tell you that it is most unwise, nay unfathomably stupid, to carry thousands of dollars in cash around on your person, but, let’s be honest, there is a level of wealth at which money stops being something you think about. What if you lose your wallet? Well, who gives a fuck, really, a couple thousand dollars is nothing. It’s Viktor’s coffee money. 

And yes, this brief stop at the tip jar might appear odd when viewed later on one of the restaurant’s few security cameras, but what can they do? Accuse him of paying for his meal and tipping generously? If he’d taken from the tip jar, that would be prosecutable, but however eccentric it may appear, particularly in the surrounding circumstances, there was nothing anyone could say to him dropping a wad of cash at a business that may soon be in financial strife due to events out of their control. And anyway, people do all kinds of strange things when they’re in shock, do they not?

The table that he’d chosen for himself and Mr. Smith to dine at had been chosen carefully. This particular place was not high class enough to have more than one or two security cameras, mostly aimed at the front, where the register was located, but a decent part of the dining room could still be seen, if not very clearly, through the camera lens. Viktor’s chosen table was, of course, not in this part of the dining room, and would not appear on film. There would be no evidence that Viktor had been seated with the man now dead, and it wasn’t something that the witnesses were likely to remember and bring up later; they’d had far more pressing things to pay attention to at the time. 

He had left the building and managed to be couple of blocks away and around a corner by the time the police arrived on scene. All’s well that ends well. Well, not well for Mr. Smith, and this would likely be the cause of a headache in Viktor’s near future, but it certainly could have gone much worse.

With any luck, this would be someone else’s problem now. 

It had indeed become someone else’s problem, Yakov’s problem to be precise, about thirty seconds after Viktor dialed his number, standing out in the cold, his irritation growing with every ring that sounded without Yakov picking up. When the old man finally answered, Viktor gave him a brief rundown of the situation and, luckily, Yakov hadn’t even suggested that Viktor take care of this one himself. He’d merely barked out something about people being useless and making his life difficult, shouted about the state of the world these days, and had a brief coughing fit, before telling Viktor to go home, and that he’d call if Viktor was needed.

Viktor resolved to turn off his phone, that is, until he remembered that that very device was his link to the lovely Yuuri Katsuki. Perhaps he should get a second phone, one to use exclusively for social matters, namely contact with beautiful Yuuri, and retire this phone to exclusively work calls. Looking at it then, Viktor realized that it’s really rather silly not to have done so before then, but perhaps the thought hadn’t occurred because Viktor hadn’t had any social matters for which to use his telephone. 

Good god, Viktor could use a break. He’d have his coffee date with Yuuri in the morning, but that was hardly the kind of break that Viktor needed. Something longer, something farther away from work, that was the ticket. But not something easily obtained.

He genuinely considered for a moment making arrangements to be injured in such a way that would get him out of work, but that would heal well and not give him too much pain in the interim. He shelved the thought for the time being, but didn’t dismiss it entirely. He was that desperate for a vacation.

But maybe coffee in the morning would make him feel better. Maybe things would look brighter then. 

***

He had felt better, he really had, up until Yuuri had pointed out the holes in his coat. 

It isn’t regret over the coat being ruined, lord knows he has the cash to buy five identical replacements if he so chooses, but standing there, watching Yuuri depart, he realizes that this whole incident illuminates that which Viktor hadn’t thought through very well. 

He mustn’t wear the same clothes to see Yuuri as he’s worn to work; there’s too much of a risk of Viktor missing something that would be hard to explain away. He needs to switch up their meeting spots as much as possible without drawing Yuuri’s attention and causing him to question it. Viktor needs to manufacture a better story about his family, about his work. He needs to go buy that second cellphone and give Yuuri that number.

He’ll have to be secretive to make this work.

Viktor had thought of Yuuri, at first, as a temporary distraction, a pretty plaything; he’d convinced himself that something casual would be fine, that it wouldn’t raise any problems, and that if it did, Viktor could simply disappear, the trouble disappearing with him. Now, however, he realizes that he doesn’t want casual, that he doesn’t want something he can heartlessly abandon. He wants Yuuri and everything Yuuri represents. The good life, or at least what hint of it that Viktor can get with the life he’s been born into.

Yuuri is everything good that Viktor isn’t. He’s sweet. He’s kind. He’s honest. He’s got a pretty smile and an infectious laugh. He’s got just enough flaws to be endearing, and that, in itself, is perfect. Viktor wants that goodness in his life, wants to hold it in his hands, to feed it, help it grow. He doesn’t want to defile it.

Yuuri can never know about the syndicate, and the syndicate can never know about Yuuri. If either were to happen, Viktor would lose everything.

He’ll start making plans right away. It’s never good to be unprepared.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Did you enjoy the murder? 
> 
> Side note: yeah, Viktor, keep putting Yuuri up on a pedestal. Cuz that sorta thing always ends great ... she said sarcastically
> 
> Just wait til I get our main boys killing people too ... I guess I'm aiming for a sort of love-hate relationship with you folks, cuz I anticipate getting some "why would you do that?!!" comments ...


	8. Ramen and Lovesickness

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Yuuri spots something rather odd when scrolling through the recent local news, but dismisses it, just a bit too quickly ...  
> And  
> Phichit is the best friend that Yuuri could hope to have.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is a bit shorter than many of the others, but it just worked out better as its own chapter than as the beginning of the next, larger chapter.  
> The next chapter, as you may have guessed, is gonna be Yuuri and Viktor's aquarium date, which promises to be cute af ... but with somewhat ominous undertones ...
> 
> I made myself a Ko-fi account because life's begun to look a bit more uncertain lately, so if you would like to support my works, and are able, I'd appreciate it if you would consider buying me a cup of coffee :) Here's the link to my page: http://ko-fi.com/A6763TLC

Yuuri sits on the floor of his and Phichit’s shoebox apartment, browsing the internet news on his phone, waiting for his roommate to come home for dinner.

It’s ramen again tonight, surprise surprise, but Yuuri had been inspired to take a little side trip to a grocery store on the way home from class and get some ingredients to attempt to spruce up their decidedly tired and unglamorous meal. Some spices and added fresh veggies can do a lot to improve a rather sad dinner. He’d have put it on to cook already, but he’s not sure exactly when Phichit will be home, and wants to make sure it’s fresh and piping hot when they actually sit down to eat. While instant ramen is in itself a disappointing meal, particularly when eaten often, cold and soggy instant ramen is somehow a hundred times worse. Frankly it’s inedible. 

He might not ordinarily have bothered with that little grocery trip, lord knows, while extra ingredients may improve the ramen, it’s not technically required in order to eat and be fueled by the meal. It might, in that way, be a waste of money, but he’s in a good mood today. 

It may or not have something to do with being the focus of a certain handsome Russian man’s affections over the last couple of days …

Oh, he might as well admit it, it definitely does have to do with that. 

He blushes and swipes his thumb across his phone screen, trying to escape the embarrassment of his own silly, lovesick thoughts, and scrolling down the stories for today’s news, stopping when something catches his eye. It’s a story about a shooting, something that wouldn’t have been nearly such a surprise to him when he’d been studying in Chicago for a short student exchange a year or so ago, but here in Japan, where weapons laws are far more strict, such a thing is largely unheard of … 

It had taken place in a restaurant, a place here in Tokyo, the article said, and authorities suspect gang involvement. Well, yeah, that kind of goes without saying, who else is going to have a gun around here?

He’s about to go back to the main page when a fuzzy, black and white image from one of the restaurant’s security cameras catches his eye. It’s just a tiny figure in the corner of the image, a man, evidently in motion when the image had been taken. He’s not the focus of the image, the article doesn’t mention him at all, so he’s probably not one of the perpetrators, but he catches Yuuri’s eye all the same, and for a while he’s not sure why, but then the answer dawns on him.

His coat. Viktor has a long coat like that.

Yuuri shakes his head, blushing furiously, and navigates away from the article, opening up his weather app instead to check out the conditions for Sunday, the day of his and Viktor’s date. He’s just had Viktor on the mind his all. He’s never been this excited about a date like this before, and it’s clearly getting to him, making him see Viktor everywhere, even in news stories. Earlier, he’d been rifling through the closet to get out a sweater when he had seen Phichit’s silver pashmina scarf on its special scarf hanger, and Yuuri had instantly thought of Viktor’s hair, the way it had glinted under the lights in the café. 

He can hardly believe himself, getting so silly over a little crush. He’s in his twenties, for Christ’s sake … 

The door rattles and Yuuri catches the sound of muffled cursing before Phichit crashes into the apartment, marching directly to his bed before shedding his coat and throwing down his bookbag, then proceeding to flop face-first down onto the mattress. 

“Rough day?” Yuuri ventures, only to be answered by a muffled mumbling on the part of Phichit.

“What?”

“Not rough, just too freaking long,” Phichit clarifies, turning his head to the side so that he is no longer speaking directly into a pillow, “Yuuri, if you’re ever given the opportunity to take evening classes instead of early morning ones, don’t do it. You may think ‘oh, I should take an evening class so I won’t have to get up early,’ and it’ll seem like a good idea, but it is a trap and a lie, so don’t do it.”

“Okay,” Yuuri chuckles, sympathetic but amused nonetheless.

“So,” a glint appears in Phichit’s eye and a smirk slides onto his face, making Yuuri just the slightest be apprehensive, “how is my little lovesick roommate today?”

“Hey!” Yuuri can’t help the blush, and now Phichit has won.

“For real though,” Phichit says, propping himself up onto his elbows to gaze down on Yuuri where he sits on the floor, “exactly how many hours did you spend today dreaming about a very particular hot Russian bod?” 

“Phichiiiiiit!” 

“What?” Phichit exclaims, “C’mon, Yuuri, you know I’ve got nothing going on in my life right now, romantically speaking, let me live vicariously through you!”

“What about that guy you met in the university bookstore? You were talking about ice skating, I remember, and it seemed to be going really well.”

“Ugh, that,” Phichit sighs, “Yeah, that didn’t work out. Turns out he’s obsessed with hockey, but he thinks that figure skating is ‘too feminine’ for guys to do."

“Ugh, what? Ew!” Yuuri says, disgusted.

“Yeah, and he said that after I’d told him that I like figure skating,” Phichit elaborates as he slides off the bed to perch next to Yuuri, “Basically he was a toolbox, so I called it quits before it went too far.”

“Oh, I’m sorry man,” Yuuri tries to console him, tipping his head to rest on Phichit’s shoulder.

“Eh, it’s fine,” Phichit, waving his hand dismissively and turning to rest his chin on Yuuri’s head, “I wasn’t really invested in it anyway.”

“Not to mention that you’re obviously too good for him and his nonsense.”

“Hehe,” Phichit chuckles, “Yeah, well, obviously. But I still wanna hear your gossip! What’s the news, my dude?”

“Well, we’re going out this weekend …” Yuuri mumbles.

“What?!” Phichit shouts, sitting up and throwing his hands up in the air in enthusiasm.

“Yeah, Viktor’s taking me to the aquarium …” 

“Oh my gosh, an aquarium date?” Phichit says excitedly, “That’s so cute! It’s like a scene from a romance movie!”

“I don’t know …”

“What?” Phichit asks, “You’re exactly the protagonist I’d choose.”

“Thanks,” Yuuri smiles, but the doubt is audible in his voice, “but I don’t know … He’s, like, movie-star handsome, and he dresses like an Armani suit model, and he’s this successful business man, and I’m none of those things…”

“Hold up, Yuuri,” Phichit interrupts, “ Have you forgotten my birthday party back when we were on that student exchange in Chicago?”

“Oh my god,” Yuuri groans, putting his head in his hands, “that was so embarrassing, I don’t even know how I got up the courage in the first place …”

“Yuuri, you were hot as hell, okay?” Phichit says, “Everybody there thought you were a gorgeous, talented, sexy beast, alright? You know, after you did that pole routine, I know for a fact that at least six of the people there were head-over-heels in love with you.”

“What?”

“Yeah,” Phichit affirms, “You know Tyler, that economics major guy? He literally told me so.”

“He did?”

“Yeah!” Phichit exclaims, “So don’t start believing that you’re somehow not good enough to be with this Viktor guy, who I’ve yet to meet, by the way,” Phichit side-eyes Yuuri pointedly, “If he’s acting like he likes you, it’s because he does! And it’s not a surprise that he would, because you are likeable, Yuuri.”

“Thanks, man,” Yuuri says, smiling gratefully.

“Look,” Phichit adds, speaking softly, “I know you can’t help the fact that these thoughts creep in from time to time, but when they do, please remember that they’re not the truth, and that they’re not the boss of you.”

Yuuri can’t think of anything appropriate to say to that, never having been the best at articulating his feelings, so he just scoots closer to sit pressed up against Phichit’s side, hoping that the way he leans his cheek against Phichit’s arm communicates how glad he is to have Phichit as his friend. 

They sit quietly for a minute or two before Phichit breaks the silence.

“I am gonna wanna meet him someday, this Viktor guy.”

“Hmm,” Yuuri makes a noncommittal noise, having begun to doze off in the period of quiet.

“It’s none of my business, of course,” Phichit goes on, more lightheartedly, “but you know how nosy I am …”

“It’s fine, I want you to meet him,” Yuuri yawns, “I’ll ask him about it at the aquarium.” 

“’Cause if he’s really as pretty, sweet, and rich as you say, I need to find out if he’s got a brother handy … Or a sister, really, I’m good with either.”

“Oh, Phichit!” Yuuri chides him playfully, giving his arm a gentle smack.

“What? I’m nothing if not practical.”

“Yeah,” Yuuri agrees sarcastically, “sure you are.”

Yuuri could have been content to fall asleep right there on the floor, but his stomach announced that it had other ideas with a loud, long rumbling sound, which, of course, was followed by a hysterical snort-giggle on the part of Phichit.

“Dinner?” Phichit asked, still giggling.

“Yes please,” Yuuri said, standing and heading in the direction of their tiny kitchenette.

“What is it tonight?” Phichit asked skipping up behind Yuuri as he knelt to open their minifridge.

“Ramen,” Yuuri replied offhandedly, as the answer is hardly likely to cause a shock. 

When there is no answering groan or sound of approval from behind him, Yuuri turns around to investigate, only to be met with the saddest pair of puppy-dog eyes he’s ever seen.

“Oh, don’t look at me like that! I got us stuff to put in it, see!” he says, gesturing at the plastic bag he’d just retrieved from the fridge. 

This meets with Phichit’s somewhat hesitant approval, and they set about making dinner, which turns out quite well, if Yuuri does say so himself. He may have found a long-term, if not permanent, solution to the boring-ramen problem. He must also admit, however, that his extreme hunger likely contributed a lot to the taste of the meal. As they say, hunger is the best chef, and instant ramen is fundamentally terrible.

They chat over their bowls, talking about school, work, and all the other things that two tired university students are wont to talk about, but all the time, there’s Viktor, hovering in the back of Yuuri’s mind. 

And when he closes his eyes and tries to slip into sleep that night, it’s to the thought of silver hair and bright blue eyes …


	9. The Dark Room

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A glimpse into Viktor's darker activities and darker side ... he's oh so loving, there's no denying, but that does not mean that he is safe to be around.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I intended this chapter to be the story of Viktor and Yuuri's aquarium date, but the opening scene (ahem, I hope y'all don't mind a little light torture) ended up being so long that I decided I might as well separate the two. Besides, I didn't want to make y'all wait even longer for any update. So this one may be a bit short, but it's a little something to tide you over.
> 
> I've been very busy with university stuff, enough that I haven't had nearly as much time as I'd like to work on my fics and art. I have, however, gotten a few thousand words down for later chapters, ones that the plot hasn't quite reached yet. What can I say, inspiration stuck, if not in the most convenient way possible. 
> 
> I feel a bit weird doing this, but ... if you would like to support my works, and are able, I'd appreciate it if you would consider buying me a cup of coffee. Here's the link to my page: http://ko-fi.com/A6763TLC  
> I also do writing commissions, if you're interested. You have a story you'd like to see me write? I can do that. Contact: artemisgracecommissions@gmail.com.
> 
> I have no intention to pressure y'all, you really don't have to do anything, I just really want to buy myself a new pair of shoes for my 21st birthday.

Viktor lights up a cigarette, a creature of cold malice, menace incarnate in a sleek, black suit. 

“Please,” a voice quivers in the dark of the room, “C’mon, Viktor, don’t do this to me, man.”

The room is small, at least it feels very small, the air stale, unmoving and strangely cool. It smells of damp, of wet concrete, long faded cigarette smoke, and the beginnings of mold and mildew. A basement, perhaps? A tomb? Terrence gets a feeling, watching Viktor’s slender figure sway gently, his shape hazy, vague, more like a darker shadow among the shadows than a true corporeal form. The feeling is that which room this is, and where it is, hardly matter. A basement and a mausoleum are much the same if you don’t really expect to ever leave it.

“You know me Terrence,” Viktor says calmly seeming to survey the room, taking a long drag on the cigarette before blowing out a foul cloud into the small space, appearing curiously aware of the environment around him, although Terrence cannot see his surroundings, dark as it is, “I don’t like doing this, and I wouldn’t have to if you hadn’t double-crossed us. Surely you are aware of this? You knew the rules and you chose to break them.”

His eyes flick over to Terrence where he sits strapped to a metal chair with what feel like zip-ties, the ice blue of Viktor’s irises lit up strangely red by the warm glow of the burning cigarette tip. There’s something demonic about the man, as if he were simultaneously a creature of ice and fire, all the cold, dispassionate judgement of the former, and all the violent retribution of the latter. No one could really be surprised, at such a moment as this, if they were to see Viktor’s silver-haired head sprouting horns. It would be nothing more than the internal finally being reflected externally. 

Infernally. 

“Frankly, Terrence,” he utters the words as one would some grand, dire pronouncement, and to Terrence it is, “you’ve personally put a dampener on my weekend.”

“It wasn’t anything personal, man!” Terrence exclaims, straining impotently against his bonds and feeling and uncanny mixture of fear and regret, the likes of which he can’t claim to have truly experienced up until now.

“And yet, I’m afraid it’s very personal to me,” Viktor leans over, placing both his hands onto Terrence’s wrists where they are bound to the chair arms, his grip deceptively strong for the grace of the movement, placing himself in such a way that Terrence cannot avoid his gaze, “You see, I have something special planned.”

He sees the sudden look of mortal terror flash across Terrence’s face.

“Oh, not for you, you idiot,” Viktor says to him, voice biting, laden with contempt, “I have plans with someone I care very much about. I am doing my best not to fuck up what we have, what I have worked and prayed for. This is my gift from God for the suffering of my life, for everything I’ve endured, and I will not simply let that slip by. But you, you’re making that increasingly difficult.”

“I didn’t mean to hurt you, Viktor, you know I wouldn’t do that!” Terrence shouts in his own defense, truly realizing, perhaps for the first time, that Viktor is not only violent and clever, but that he is not a sane man.

“No? And why wouldn’t you? Because you know my most intimate thoughts, my wishes? Because you care particularly for my well-being?” Viktor quizzes him, circling the chair like a hawk circling its prey, talons out, “Or is it because you know well enough to be afraid of me?”

“I - ” Terrence starts, before Viktor interrupts him, clearly uninterested in any potential excuse the man might have.

“You know enough to be afraid,” he says sharply, his voice a razor blade, “which makes me wonder why ever you would go behind my back, selling weapons as if you were the owner, not the middle-man. Perhaps you didn’t know quite enough then, I can think of no other reasonable explanation. I must say, I am very confused, my friend.”

“You’d have done the same!” Terrence exclaims, trying to appeal as one criminal to another, the desperation audible in his voice, “There was so much, I mean, the money -”

“Was my family’s,” Viktor finishes his sentence for him, “and not yours. The proceeds from the sale were ours, and ours to distribute among our loyal people. You would have gotten your cut, we always pay that which is due, but you had to get greedy. Now you get nothing.”

He’s standing behind Terrence now, out of sight, and that which he cannot see frightens him far more than the way Viktor’s eyes had glinted, lit up by the burning end of his cigarette. The hairs on the back of his neck stand on end, the primitive, instinctual part of his mind screaming a forewarning of a predator in close quarters. The tobacco smoke from the cigarette swirls around him, manipulated by their breaths, by their slightest movements, by the gentle ebb and flow of the stale air that fills the room. It moves in the darkness the way that dust motes would move in the light. It seems to make shapes, shifting and morphing, and they dance before him before returning to amorphous, primordial nothingness, hypnotizing.

Perhaps it’s a factor of the adrenaline that now races through his veins, muddling his mind, or perhaps he’s been drugged. Not that it would make much of a difference either way.

The trance is broken when he feels the burning end of Viktor’s cigarette make firm contact with the side of his neck. The smell of burnt skin reaches his nose, but it remains largely unnoticed in concert with the agony that imbeds itself into his being. He screams, but he knows that there’s no one anywhere nearby to hear it. At least, not anyone who would care enough to stop this.

“It hurts, I know, and it is petty of me,” Viktor says calmly, pulling the cigarette away from the now singed skin, “and I ordinarily wouldn’t stoop so low, but you vexed me. You hurt me personally.”

“I’m sorry,” Terrence cries out, tears streaming down his flushed visage, “I’m sorry!”

“Thank you for saying so, and I apologize for my impulsiveness,” Viktor smiles, patting the side of Terrence’s face, “And don’t you worry, I’m not going to do anything more to you.”

“You won’t?” the man asks, voice trembling, an undercurrent of faint, false hope running beneath the words.

“Of course not,” Viktor assures, flicking his cigarette to the ground and snuffing the faint light out with the tip of a designer shoe, sending a thin thread of smoke to dissipate as the embers die, “I have a date.”

He turns, grabbing his coat off a hook on the wall that Terrence hadn’t noticed before. He puts it on, adjusting the lapels precisely, calmly, as if he hadn’t just burned a man with a cigarette butt in a fleeting fit of rage. As if he hadn’t been involved at all. As if he hadn’t a care in the world.   
As if he weren’t now leaving Terrence to the dogs. 

“Oh God,” Terrence mutters, voice roughening with a deep, all-consuming fear, “you really are crazy …”

“Goodbye, Terrence,” Viktor says casually, as if he hadn’t heard, opening up a square of bright light in the wall which Terrence knows must be a door, stepping out into the world beyond the room.

There’s another figure waiting out in the light, one that Terrence can’t recognize with the glare, standing by, and he watches as Viktor pats the figure on the shoulder, saying something that Terrence cannot hear, before stepping out into the light, fading into brightness until he can be seen from the room no more. The unknown figure moves in imposingly to take Viktor’s place, the door slamming shut on the light, and darkness reigning once more.

He was right. Terrence wouldn’t see Viktor ever again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, for real this time, the next chapter is the date, I swear.


	10. Witness

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Viktor and Yuuri go on their aquarium date and all goes well ... until Viktor spies a troublingly familiar face among the crowd ...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm really sorry for the crazy long wait, you guys. My life has been a bit nuts of late, what with university classwork, Sakura Con, and trying to arrange my study abroad in France for the coming year. I also found myself disenchanted with my creative pursuits there for a while, a little depressed about it, but I'm feeling a bit better now, so you needn't worry.
> 
> Long story short, I've been awfully distracted from writing, but I'm back for a bit.

The day dawned cold but with crystal clear blue sky, visible above the layer of greyish industrial fog that always hung above such a major city. Yuuri breathes in the air, so cold it’s almost painful, piercing, and yet it fills him with a sort of contentedness that the warmer air indoors could never give him. Perhaps it’s the reminiscence of the air inside the ice rink that gives him that sense of calm, the familiarity of the sensation. 

He could sure use some calm on this particular morning. Today he’s meeting Viktor at the aquarium for their first date. The thought induces a sort of involuntary shiver, one that has nothing to do with the ambient temperature, yet elicits goosebumps all the same. Yuuri can’t help but think that perhaps he’s going into this a bit fast, but it’s been such a long time since anyone has shown that kind of interest in him, at least, he thinks, recalling Phichit’s words, not to his face. Having someone interested now, after the long emotional drought, is awfully seductive, encouraging him to take things further, quicker than he might ordinarily do.

Perhaps that’s something to keep in mind. Generally speaking, Yuuri would want to get to know someone a bit better before going on any proper dates with them … but this is an opportunity he would hate to miss out of hesitation. He’s sure that once he lets Viktor know that he’d rather go slow, Viktor will agree; he seems like a nice guy. 

He takes the train, eventually ending up at Omori-kaigan Station, and while he knows that from there it’s only an eight minute walk to the aquarium itself, the journey takes him something closer to fifteen minutes, as he has to spend the first five standing awkwardly outside the station, shifting from foot to foot as he considers all the ways this could go wrong. He manages to get himself to move at last, but he walks a mite slower than he would were he brimming with confidence. 

As he comes up to the entrance, he can’t quite tell if the sinking feeling in his gut is one of pleasant surprise or of instant regret as he takes in the sight of Viktor standing outside, oblivious to the people swirling about as he fiddles rather intently with his phone. Almost as if he has some sort of sixth sense specifically for detecting the presence of Yuuris, he looks up from the sleek black device in his hand to make direct eye contact, a wide smile taking up residence on his face. He doesn’t wait for Yuuri to walk to him, instead stepping forward to meet him, arms going out as he swoops in for a hug of greeting. It throws Yuuri off for a moment, such close physical proximity so soon, especially in public, but as he recalls the way that Viktor took his hands in his the last time they met, he decides he doesn’t mind so much. Viktor is clearly a very physically affectionate person, and frankly the warmth of his chest as he pulls Yuuri towards it is not unwelcome. 

Does that mean Yuuri is “thirsty”? He shakes the thought off, for yonder lies madness and a deep and possibly permanent sense of embarrassment. 

“Yuuri! How good it is to see you!” Viktor exclaims as the pulls back from the embrace, “Are you well?”

Yuuri smiles despite the blush that rises in his cheeks, threatening to burn them from the inside out.

“Yeah, I’m fine, and how are you?”

“If I am honest,” the man begins, reaching up to brush his hair away from his face in a manner that appears to be more out of habit than anything else, as it proves wholly ineffective when the silvery curtain falls instantly back into place, “it has been a stressful week at work.”

“Oh, I’m sorry …” Yuuri finds himself suddenly concerned that Viktor might prefer to be relaxing elsewhere. 

“Don’t be sorry, this day out with you is the perfect respite that I need,” Viktor finishes off the phrase with a flirtatious wink before turning towards the aquarium entrance, “Shall we go in?”

“Sure!” 

Yuuri fishes about in his pocket for his wallet as they filter in amongst the other visitors, but as he retrieves the object, going to remove the required 1,350 yen, but he finds his hand gently stopped by Viktor’s own.  
“Please, let me.”

“But …” Yuuri hesitates, “You paid for coffee before, the least I can do is get us tickets.”

“I invited you here,” Viktor says smoothly, soothingly, “I asked you to come, so it is my responsibility to ensure that you should want for nothing while I enjoy your company.”

Yuuri can’t help but remain slightly skeptical, but Viktor speaks again.

“It is how I was taught things are done,” he says, looking winsome and altogether too charming to be real, “Please allow me the honor?”

Yuuri has absolutely nothing to say to that, so he just nods his assent. While his sense of independence insists that he argue, the general thinness of his wallet encourages him to just let it go. 

“Well, if you insist …”

Viktor grins, suave style giving way momentarily to a sort of dopey, puppy-like expression. As he strides away from Yuuri to buy the tickets, Yuuri can almost imagine him loping away like a big, happy dog. Frankly, it’s endearing. 

Not to mention that, while the smooth, flawless finish that Viktor generally sports is deeply appealing, the silliness is appealing in another way. It makes the man seem much more human, less unattainable. 

Viktor returns moments later brandishing two tickets, one of which he holds out to Yuuri. Yuuri takes it, blushing as his fingers brush Viktor’s own during the exchange. The blush deepens as Viktor offers his arm for Yuuri to hold on to in the midst of the crowd, but he takes that too and allows Viktor to lead him into the aquarium exhibits. 

It’s sweet, the way that Viktor gets so enthusiastic over tropical fish. It’s not really what you’d generally expect from a relatively sophisticated businessman, but he doesn’t seem to care about looking the part, tugging Yuuri along excitedly towards the tunnel tank that allows visitors to walk through with sea life all about them, as if in the ocean themselves. As they enter the tunnel, Viktor slows and stops, looking all about them with his mouth hanging slightly, adorably ajar in wonder, his hand still gently, distractedly holding on to the fabric of Yuuri’s jacket. All of a sudden, he jerks his hand up to point.

“Look, Yuuri, a shark!” He exclaims, his accent a bit heavier in his excitement.

“I see it!” he assures, feeling himself buoyed up by the other’s enthusiasm, a grin spreading across his face in response.

Despite the sort of perpetual anxiety that Yuuri has grown to expect from engaging socially with anyone besides his family or Phichit, he finds himself relaxing into the experience, and the more relaxed he becomes, the easier the conversation comes. Talking about fish becomes talking about animals in general, and soon, as they’re sitting down on a bench to give their feet a rest, Yuuri hears the greatest news he could have hoped to hear: Viktor loves dogs. 

At the very mention of dogs, Viktor whips out his phone and pulls up a picture of a large poodle with a dopey dog smile sitting on a white couch.

“My Makkachin is the sweetest doggy in the world!” Viktor gushes, swiping on his phone screen to reveal not one, nor two, but six pictures of the dog, Makkachin, all clearly taken mere seconds after each other in a burst of affectionate enthusiasm. 

As preoccupied as Yuuri is with the image of a cute dog, he can’t help but turn his eyes to the background, curious about what Viktor’s home, where he and his dog live, might be like. It’s a bit blurry, but apart from the white couch that Makkachin is sitting upon, Yuuri can see a minimalist-style room and wide windows that open directly onto a skyline. Viktor must live somewhere fancy, up high …

“What a cutie!” he exclaims, focusing back on the subject of the photo and not on his speculations.

“I know, right?” Viktor agrees before sobering slightly, “I feel a bit guilty though.”

“Oh? Why?” Yuuri questions, catching the change in mood.

“With how my work has been going lately, I haven’t been able to spend as much time with Makkachin as I would like to … The poor baby needs lots of attention, and I feel so bad when I can’t give it,” He looks up from the phone picture to Yuuri’s face, but doesn’t quite meet Yuuri’s eyes, “I’ve had to leave Makka with a friend of mine a lot recently, and while I know they get along really well, I still think it should be my responsibility.”

It occurs to Yuuri that this may be the first genuinely personal detail that Viktor has shared with him, the first real insight into the struggles of Viktor’s private life. Sure he’s talked about his job being stressful, but not with any real detail, nothing beyond what’s generally acceptable for small talk. Viktor is actually opening up to him, a show of vulnerability, however slight … and that deserves some kind of reciprocity. The best advice on dating that Phichit ever gave him was that relationships are all about give and take, equal exchange, even from the start. To get sincerity, you have to give it in return.

“I’m sorry, Viktor,” Yuuri consoles, placing a comforting hand on Viktor’s back, and after a pause, he continues, “I miss my dog too.”

“You have one?” Viktor asks, perking up a little.

“Yeah, his name is Vicchan.”

“Vicchan?”

“Well,” Yuuri blushes a bit, “actually, it’s funny, but his full name is really Victor, like your name, but with a ‘c’ instead of a ‘k’.”

“Your dog and I share the same name?” Viktor’s eyes shine, “It must be fate! You and I were meant to meet!”

“Hehe,” Yuuri giggles at the joke, “Maybe it is! But yeah, I can’t take care of him in my little apartment, there just isn’t enough room, so he lives with my parents back home … I haven’t been back in a while.”

“Perhaps you will go back soon? During a school break?” Viktor suggests, eyes sympathetic. 

“Maybe,” Yuuri sighs, “Before I would have gone home to help my parents with the hot spring on school breaks, but since it closed, there’s not much point. We need the money, so I need to work, and there’s no work back home.”

“That is a shame,” Viktor says, shaking his head with a gentle sway of silver hair, “I would have liked to visit you at your home. I could bring Makkachin to meet your Vicchan and they could have a play date.”

Yuuri can’t keep the grin back at that. The thought of Viktor wanting to come to his hometown, let alone specifically to visit him is surreal enough, adding in the thought of their dogs playing together around the closed hot spring pushes the scene into the territory of ridiculousness. Still … it’s a nice idea all the same.

“Maybe someday,” Yuuri says, allowing himself to be impractically optimistic, “We never know what life will bring us; we could very well have a play date for our dogs sometime in future. There’s just no telling what could happen yet.”

“Someday,” Viktor agrees, nodding, as though it were an established plan, as if it were not improbable, but guaranteed. 

Yuuri sure isn’t going to dash this wonderfully silly man’s hopes, no matter how unrealistic his hopes for the future. 

All of a sudden, Viktor’s demeanor changes slightly as he stiffens, head jerking upright as he glances about. He seems to search the crowd for a moment before his eyes still, resting upon something is the crowd, though Yuuri can’t identify exactly what he’s looking at. 

“What is it, Viktor?” he asks, slight concern bleeding into his voice, “Are you alright?”

There is a moment of silence between them before Viktor shakes off whatever had taken hold of him, turning back to Yuuri with a calm expression.

“I apologize, Yuuri,” he says, smiling, “I just thought I saw someone I know, but I was mistaken.”

“Oh, okay,” Yuuri relaxes, glad that nothing had gone wrong. 

They haven’t finished their date yet. 

***

Everything is going absolutely magically. Their conversation hasn’t stalled even once, an easy companionship growing between them that Viktor positively revels in. Yuuri is beautiful, compassionate, intelligent, simply wonderful. 

He’s thought for a little while now that Yuuri is exceedingly perfect, but when Yuuri tells him that his beloved pet shares his name, Viktor is stunned, although he endeavors not to let it show. If he could, he would drop to his knees in reverence; this is no coincidence, truly it must be divine evidence, proof that Yuuri and he were destined to meet. Viktor has never been an especially godly man, but he’s not fool enough to ignore signs from the universe, from powers beyond humanity, when they come to him. Yuuri is an angel, he thinks, sent to relieve Viktor from his loneliness, to redeem him from the wrongs he has done, to teach him to be more than he currently is. Yuuri is better than he is, and Viktor will take his example, as he’s clearly meant to. 

Viktor will learn. He will not waste this. 

They continue to converse even as he’s dazzled by the light of Yuuri, that is until some other presence causes the hairs on the back of his neck to raise, something out there, in the crowd that files past the bench they’ve been sitting on. They’re being watched. 

He darts his eyes about, searching, until he spies a familiar head of blonde hair perched upon a thin frame. It’s that kid, the one from the other night, looking directly at Viktor and Yuuri, eyes focused, holding that same fear and anger that Viktor remembers from before, tinged with a hint of confusion. He’s seen them together, and he’s been following them.

Why? 

How much of a threat is he? 

What is Viktor to do with such a troublesome -observant- child?

Well, whatever proves necessary, of course.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Viktor wants to be a good person, but he's not above a bit of child murder if he thinks there's a threat to his opportunity for a perfect life ...  
> (he's not gonna kill Yuri, no children die in this, don't worry).   
> ...  
> (but I had you going for a moment there, right?)


	11. Spy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Viktor confronts Yuri as to why he's followed himself and Yuuri to the aquarium, and in doing so, learns a few things about recent events in the syndicate ... and he may just have acquired a stray child to look after ... There's also that ...
> 
> Also, warning for an extremely brief reference to child abuse. It is not a direct reference, but rather a reference to the potential for adults to take advantage of vulnerable kids (as part of an assurance that such a thing will not happen to anyone in this fic). I just want y'all to be aware so no one is caused undue pain.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm back once more! Things have been nuts lately, with the school quarter ending and trying to sort out my visa and stuff to study in France next school year ... it's been a mess, basically, and I can't wait for the process to be over so I can just relax before I have to move to another country.  
> Anyway, it's been stressful ... and expensive, which is why I'd like to remind you folks that I do writing commissions! You have a story you'd like me to write? You'd like me to come up with a story just for you? I can do that! If you're interested, hit me up at artemisgracecommissions@gmail.com. I'd really appreciate it.

The rest of the date goes well, Viktor thinks, as he does his very best to appear just as charmed and attentive as he had been before the appearance of their unexpected observer. He and Yuuri continue to talk about all sorts of things as he led Yuuri about gently by his elbow, but always with a little blond head peeking between the crowds of aquarium-goers in the periphery of his vision.

Did the boy, Yuri, intend to be seen, or was he just absolutely abysmal at stealth? 

The kid wore either ratty or fashionably distressed light-wash jeans, white tennis shoes, and a leopard-print hoodie that Viktor doesn’t remember from the last time they’d met. Had he stolen them, or were they gifts from a new patron within the syndicate, someone who’d elected to take care of the boy for favors of some form or another. Running surveillance on rivals, for example.

Viktor is attentive, charming, the epitome of a good date, until evening falls and Yuuri says he has to go home. Were circumstances different, Viktor would offer to drive him home, but with the little issue of a tiny blond spy to deal with, that gallantry had to be scrapped. Just another wrench in a long list of assorted tools thrown into the machinations of Viktor’s attempts at a normal relationship. 

 

Yuuri gives him a kiss on the cheek before they part that evening, the most charming blush painting his cheeks and nose as he darts up, standing on his tiptoes to deposit a quick peck to the side of Viktor’s face. He skitters away mere seconds after his lips leave Viktor’s cheek, but the magic endures as Viktor watches his go, a hand pressed gently to the spot Yuuri had touched on his cheek.

There’s something almost spiritual about that moment, in the low evening light, the last touches of the sun retreating from the city, a deep blue replacing what pale winter sunlight had seeped through the clouds, as Viktor watches Yuuri half-jog away. The warm light glints off of Yuuri’s slick black hair, creating the image of a sort of halo that Viktor can’t help but see as a sign. It’s as if the man himself glows with a sweet radiance, and a pleasant warmth fills Viktor’s chest.

It’s this, this is the feeling that Viktor is chasing, almost like a high. His heart beats faster, not the quick pace of fear, but the elevated pulse of elation, a brief, wonderful reprieve from the dull, slow, disenchanted beat he’s grown so used to. He can see how easily this could become addictive, more so than the numerous illicit substances he’s used to pushing for the syndicate. 

It’s the exact sensation he’s never realized he craved … and it’s something he will most certainly defend.

Which meant that the little brat, Yuri, had to be seen to. 

Whether Yuri realized that he’s been spotted, Viktor can’t say, but he appears not to have gone anywhere now that Yuuri has left, still lurking among the scattered people leaving the aquarium before it closes, pretending to look at his phone whenever the other visitors briefly turn their eyes to him. On the assumption that Yuri doesn’t know he’s been seen, Viktor elects to walk away towards the parking garage, whipping out and lighting a cigarette, and taking a casual drag, the very picture of the inattentive, unobservant man as he strolls over to his car, parked in a poorly-lit back corner of the garage.

Yuri’s tennis shoes are quiet as he softly treads across the asphalt, but Viktor is listening for the light footfalls, and as Yuri reaches him, he spins about abruptly, dropping his cigarette to the ground and seizing the boy by the front of his hoodie.

“Ahhh!” the kid yells as he’s suddenly grabbed and pulled roughly into Viktor’s menacing orbit.

“Why are you spying on me?” Viktor demands, voice harsh and hand harsher as he yanks the cloth in his closed fist, making sure that Yuri’s attention is nowhere but on Viktor and the potential shit he could find himself in should he be less than forthcoming.

“Fuck!” Yuri shouts, still very clearly caught off his guard, but as he sees Viktor’s eyes narrow at the crude language, he becomes more controlled, saying, “I’m sorry, Mr. Nikiforov, I just don’t know what to do! I fucked up and I’m out of money and Yakov won’t help me! I got no place to stay and nothing to eat! I’m sorry!”

“Think very, very carefully before you answer,” Viktor says slowly, deliberately, “Are you absolutely certain that you are not here to keep tabs on me? That no one has ordered you to follow me?”

“No, no, no one told me to follow you!”

“I can find out if you are lying,” Viktor grimly assures him.

“I know you can,” Yuri blurts out, desperate, “I’m not here cuz anyone told me to be! Hell, Yakov would tell you to toss me in a gutter to die.”

“You keep mentioning Yakov, and that you fucked up. What exactly did you do?” Viktor questions, still holding Yuri fast, ready for him to try to take off at any moment.

“I was supposed to transport something, to deliver it to somebody,” Yuri explains, talking altogether too quickly, “I don’t know what it was, they didn’t tell me and I knew better than to ask, but it must have been something important to somebody, cuz I got jumped.”

“You got jumped?”

“Yeah, yeah, on the way to the drop-off point, these two guys came up behind me! They hit my head, and I didn’t pass out, but I fell and I couldn’t get up. My vision was all fuzzy, so I saw them take the packet, but I couldn’t really see their faces,” he pauses for breath before continuing, “Then I passed out, and when I woke up it was almost daytime, and I made my way back to Yakov and told him what happened.”

“That would be your mistake,” Viktor says, matter-of-factly.

“I thought he’d understand, that he’d take care of me!”

“Mistake.”

“I know, I know, but still, I went back to him and he slapped me around a bit, and I thought that would be it, but then he told me to get out, and that if he or any of his people saw me again, they’d kill me.”

“It’s odd enough that no one killed you there and then,” Viktor muses.

“One of the guys was gonna, but then Yakov told him to stop, and then he threw me out. Said he didn’t kill me because you told him off about me that one time, about leaving a child like me on the street.”

“He didn’t have you killed because he thought you had my favor?”

“I guess,” Yuri shrugs, as much as he can while Viktor’s holding him fast, “You’ll probably get a call or a text from him any second. I came straight here after he tossed me.”

It’s then that Viktor registers the early faint signs of bruising on Yuri’s cheekbones and chin in the dim lighting of the parking garage. It’s all bruising, no cuts, at least. He’s lucky no one who hit him was wearing rings, or the damage would be significantly worse.

Viktor hasn’t checked his phone even once since his date with Yuuri began, so he reaches with his other hand, the one not occupied with holding a young drug mule in place, into his pocket to retrieve his work phone, tapping out the password and checking his recent calls and texts. Sure enough, there’s both a call and a text from Yakov, the text telling Viktor to let him know if Yuri makes contact or, preferably, to never say another word about him and call this all forgotten. The underlying message, of course, was that if Viktor were to decide to tell Yakov or his people about the kid’s location, he’d be making sure the kid was swiftly dispatched.

There are some things that Viktor would do anything for, but when it comes down to it, he’s never been fond of child murder. Even for the most irritating of children.

“Yakov texted, didn’t he …” Yuri says, obviously a bit apprehensive. 

“He did.”

“So, uh,” Yuri begins, and the next words are not what Viktor was expecting, “Who’s that guy from the aquarium? You seemed real close, but I don’t recognize him from the syndicate, so-”

His words are cut off by a brief gurgle as Viktor tightens his grip on the boy.

“Why are you asking?” Viktor snarls, “What is it to you who it is I am with?”

“Nothing!” Yuri gasps out, “Nothing, I just didn’t know what to say next and I was curious …”

“Your curiosity will kill you one day!”

“But not today?” Yuri asks, desperately hopeful, “Please, please, not today!”

“Not today,” Viktor sighs, releasing his grip on the boy’s hoodie, “I have no intention to kill a foolish child today.”

“Oh thank God,” Yuri breathes.

“But,” Viktor says, voice growing harsh again, “understand that if you tell anyone about the man you saw me with today, I will personally see to it that you bleed out in a back alley somewhere here in Tokyo. Tell me that you understand me.”

“I do, I understand,” Yuri assures him, “but why is he secret?”

“Recall what I said about your curiosity killing you, and rethink your words.”

“It’s not my business and I don’t need to know.”

“That’s right. Keep learning quickly and you may even live to old age.”

He knows how impossible that sounds to this kid, alone, abandoned in a foreign land where he doesn’t really speak the language, and can’t count on anyone, including the authorities. And now he’s made enemies in the syndicate that brought him here. Old age is something that happens to other people. Early death is what happens to kids like Yuri. Hell, it’s what happens to people like Viktor too, eventually.

Your wealth, your connections, they only sustain you for so long. After a time, those very things become what paints the target on your back.

But Viktor will not succumb to that fate. He’ll change it, he’s just not sure how yet.

“So,” Viktor sighs, altogether too tired for this, and somewhat regretting that he retains a conscience, “You’ve nowhere to stay, and we can safely assume that the streets are looking to see you dead?”

“Uh, pretty much,” Yuri says, appearing somewhat dazed by the conflicting relief and fear.

“Then get in the car,” Viktor orders, pressing the button on his key fob to unlock the doors and letting the boy go, pushing him towards the car door.

“Huh?”

“I’m taking you to my apartment,” Viktor clarifies, opening the driver’s side door, and ducking his head to slide into the seat.

“Uh …” 

Viktor pauses when he hears Yuri hesitate. It speaks a lot to his fears that the boy would hesitate in accepting shelter, even while the streets are all but a death sentence. Viktor’s heard enough stories, punished enough people among the syndicate who he’d discovered meddling with the young members, to know that Yuri’s fears are not unfounded.

“For fuck's sake, I told you before, it’s not like that,” he assures the boy, “I have no expectations from you other than that you keep your head down, mouth shut, and clean up after yourself while you stay in my home. Besides that you may do as you like, and I will not interfere.”

“Okay,” Yuri agrees after a moment, though still sounding somewhat wary, opening the passenger’s side door and climbing in.

Viktor also gets in, grateful that that portion of the conversation is over, and starts up the car, negotiating the vehicle out of the parking garage and onto the streets of Tokyo and the waning light of day. The quiet purring of the electric engine and lack of other sounds is a peaceful balm to Viktor’s mind.

“Thanks,” Yuri suddenly speaks up, quietly, from out of the silence, “Mr. Nikiforov, for taking me in like this. I literally owe you my life.”

“Mr. Nikiforov is my father,” Viktor replies, hiding the small, uncharacteristic smile that threatens to make its way onto his face, “While you’re staying with me, you might as well call me Viktor.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, Viktor just got himself a weird, angry child. That's gonna add some interesting stuff to Viktor and Yuuri's relationship when Yuuri finally comes over to his place ...  
> "Uh, Viktor?"  
> "Yeah?"  
> "Who's the kid in a leopard print snuggie eating peanut butter out of the jar in your kitchen?"  
> "Uh . . ."
> 
> Next time, it's back to Yuuri's POV to hear more about the date and the cheek kiss ...


	12. Threats and Eyeliner

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Viktor has a less-than-pleasant conversation with Yakov, and Yuuri has an awkward but interesting conversation with Phichit.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm afraid this chapter is a bit short; unfortunately the pacing meant I'd either have one short-ish chapter and one reasonable chapter, or just one stupidly long chapter . . . so I opted for the former. 
> 
> Oh hey, also, if you're interested in YOI plus some spookiness and excessive sweetness, I've got a new fic with all these things, called "Underneath the Great Pine Tree." In it, Viktor receives a second life after his untimely death, aiming to make the most of this mysterious and wonderful opportunity . . . including romancing the childhood sweetheart he unwillingly left behind. Visit my works to read it :)
> 
> I'm also working on an Attack on Titan commission right now, but I have room to take on a couple more commissions right now, before I move ;) If interested, contact me at artemisgracecommissions@gmail.com and I'll get back to you right away!
> 
> Edit: so I went to the ER cuz I hecked up my leg real bad, which means the next update of this might take a bit longer ... Sorry, y'all

“Viktor, tell me you haven’t taken in the kid,” comes Yakov’s voice from the speaker of Viktor’s cell phone first thing in the morning.

“Hello and good morning to you too, Yakov,” Viktor replies, stretching and yawning enormously where he lies in his king-size bed, taking delight in both the silky texture his new satin sheets and in Yakov’s evident distress.

“I let him go alive because I know you’ve got a soft spot for him, but the idea was that he would leave town, not go to you,” Yakov says into the receiver as Viktor rises from his bed, “I made it very clear that he was to have nothing to do with the family or our contacts.”

“Yakov,” Viktor drawls, sauntering his way over to his bedroom door, where he can see Yuri passed out on the couch, doing a rather decent impression of a starfish Viktor saw in the aquarium the day before, “I’m quite pleased to say that I have no idea what you are talking about.”

“Bullshit!” Yakov shouts across the line, “You’ve taken him to your place, haven’t you?”

“Have I?” Viktor muses, leaning against the doorframe, “I think I would have noticed . . .”

“Viktor, the higher ups would not be pleased to hear that the kid is still alive and kicking, let alone staying in your home. They’d see it as disobedience at best . . . At worst, I’d hate to think what they might do.”

“Well goodness, I’ve never gotten in trouble with the higher ups before . . .” he says sarcastically, doing little to hide the sentiment.

“Viktor, you can’t keep this up forever-”

“I’m fully aware!” Viktor shouts, “I have no need of your nagging.”

“I’m only trying to do what’s best for you . . .” Yakov’s voice softens somewhat.

“I know you are,” Viktor replies, jaw set, because he knows that, in Yakov’s own way, he really is, “but you failed in that endeavor the day you and my father brought me into this business.”

“Vik-”

“Oh, and by the way, should anyone up to no good find their way to my apartment, be they your men, mine, or my father’s, there will be a reckoning of the sort that leads to an incredibly in-depth carpet shampooing. I trust you understand my full meaning. Good bye now, Yakov,” Viktor says firmly, taking the phone away from his face and hanging up.

Once upon a time, he might have given in to Yakov’s morning phone call. He might have given up, decided it was none of his business, after all, the kid, Yuri, is not relation of his, nor the child of a friend. He might once have just let it go. But these days, Viktor is . . . deeply disinclined to follow this type of orders, no matter who they’re coming from.

Apart from the objections born of the struggling husk of morality that Viktor still maintains as a relic of his childhood, and apart from the general contrary nature that has raised its head more and more these past couple of years, there’s something new that is affecting his judgement: Yuuri.

Even though he has no intention of ever revealing his profession or past to the man, when engaged in his usual unsavory business, Viktor can’t help but think: “Yuuri wouldn’t like this.” Viktor can’t help but think of what Yuuri might say, might think, were he to know of Viktor’s actions, and despite the possible foolishness of it all, he’s desperate not to disappoint. 

Yuuri would want him to be kind to this teenage thug, sprawled asleep and drooling on Viktor’s previously immaculate couch. Yuuri wouldn’t want him to step aside and allow others to deal with it, not at the expense of someone innocent, and certainly not on the orders of men who’ve never done a decent thing in the whole span of their lives. 

Yuuri would want him to be good. So he will be. For Yuuri.

***

“Hey, Phichit?” Yuuri calls out into the apartment, trying to get his roommate’s attention, “Are you free?” 

It has been a few weeks since his and Viktor’s first proper date at the aquarium, and it’s gone better than Yuuri could have imagined. 

There’s just something so . . . sincere about Viktor; he can talk to Viktor about anything, and the man will accept anything Yuuri tells him, no matter how embarrassing, without blinking an eye. Sometimes the notion that Viktor likes him, like, really truly likes him, still strikes Yuuri as something that ought to be impossible, something Yuuri must have simply made up in his own mind, but every time he starts to feel those doubts, Viktor will say something that wipes them all away. 

Yuuri starts to feel ugly, then Viktor tells him he’s beautiful. Yuuri begins to feel stupid, then Viktor tells him he’s clever. Yuuri feels unimportant, but then Viktor tells him that he’s the single most captivating individual that he’s ever met . . . and he’s serious. Truly. He actually means all of it, and perhaps that’s the most unbelievable and wonderful thing.

Their date at the museum had been lovely, as had their trip to get ice cream and the ensuant walk in the park . . . but all these things, while exceedingly pleasant, were the sort of casual, fun dates that high schoolers might have, and Yuuri, well, he had begun to hope for something a bit more grown-up. A bit more serious.

He only had to think so, it seemed, before Viktor asked him to dinner at a fancy restaurant, one of the high-end places that he and Phichit could never hope to visit. It was the sort of place that people go for anniversaries, or to an intimate dinner at which they intend to propose, far from the high-school-esque dates that Yuuri had begun to grow discontent with . . .

But that meant that he had to dress up, to be fancy . . . like a grown-up . . .

“Phichit!” he calls again, rifling through the bathroom cabinet.

“Yeah, what?” comes the response, more than a little distracted by the sound of it, and also somewhat annoyed.

“Can you show me how to do eyeliner?”

Yuuri hears a gasp and the sound of something reasonably heavy falling to the floor, followed by the rapid pattering of Phichit’s feet that precede his arrival into the bathroom. He looks ecstatic, eyes wide open and sparkling, mouth shaped into a shit-eating grin.

“Yuuri, did you say that you want me to teach you to do your eyeliner?” he asks, eyes glittering with more joy than such a moment ought to warrant.

“Uh, yeah . . . Viktor is taking me out to a nice restaurant tomorrow night and I wanna do a sort of test run beforehand . . .”

Phichit leaps forward, apparently as acrobatic on cheap tile as he is on an ice rink, and seizes Yuuri in an over-enthusiastic embrace, squishing their cheeks together as he nuzzles Yuuri’s face.

“Oh, Yuuri!” he exclaims, rocking Yuuri in his arms, “My sweet child is growing up! I’m just a proud mama hen whose baby has learned to fly!”

“I would like to remind you that I am in fact a grown-ass man, and have been for some time,” Yuuri says, attempting to sound stern and matter-of-fact, though the smile that creeps onto his face rather spoils the effect. 

“Ah, yes, a grown-ass man who’s gonna go out somewhere fancy, looking fine as hell, and get that d!”

“Phichit . . .” Yuuri groans, more out of habit than anything else.

“Unless you’re not ready or inclined to get the d just yet, in which case you have plenty of time,” Phichit consoles him, patting his hair gently, “But if you need any hoe tips, I’ve got some good ones.”

“I’m inclined,” Yuuri answers, slightly hesitant, “and I may be ready . . .”

“You been wanting that Viktor d?” Phichit grins, excessively pleased.

“I’ve . . . thought about it . . .”

“Ooooooo,” Phichit squeals for a moment before pausing, the duty he feels as Yuuri's friend clearly overtaking his joy, “Wait, you know, like, all the mechanics and stuff for that, right?”

“I do have internet access,” Yuuri points out, as though that cleared everything up

“My son, you cannot use porn as sex education," Phichit chides him, "If you do half the things you see in pornos, you’ll break something, like a finger, or your whole ass . . . or a toe.”

“A toe? Why a toe? Is that . . . from experience?” Yuuri asks, rather wishing he hadn’t the moment the words leave his mouth, “But . . . how did you break a toe?”

“Yuuri, I love you dearly, but you will never, ever hear that particular story for as long as I live.”

“Noted," Yuur agrees, thinking that, despite the rearing of curiosity's head, they'd both be better off for that tale remaining untold.

“But for real though, do you need a run down of how things work?”

“Uh, no, I’m good,” Yuuri hurriedly assures his roommate, “I was, um, doing some googling a while back and I found a blog run by this gay dude who . . . explains a lot of stuff in practical terms . . . It’s legit.”

“Just so long as you’re safe,” Phichit says, ruffling Yuuri’s hair, “Now, eyeliner, you said . . . what sort of look are you thinking of?”

“I was thinking something kinda natural, I mean, I don't want to be too obvious . . . but what would you recommend?”

“We're gonna do a wing.”

“A wing?” Yuuri’s not dismissing the idea, merely feeling a tad apprehensive.

Phichit hesitates a moment before pulling a liquid eyeliner bottle from the counter drawer underneath the sink and giving it a good shake.

“A small wing,” he amends, smiling.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (please check out "Underneath the Great Pine Tree," I worked really hard to get several chapters written before I began posting, in order to update more regularly)


End file.
